Finder Preferences

Finder preferences enables you to customize several aspects of the desktop and Finder. The Finder's preferences window is organized into four different panes of options:

• General lets you set basic options for the desktop and Finder windows.

• Labels enables you to set label names for the Finder's label feature, which is discussed in Chapter 4.

• Sidebar lets you set options for the Sidebar.

• Advanced enables you to set options for the display of file extensions and the Trash warning.

To open Finder Preferences

Choose Finder > Preferences (Figure 1) or press . The Finder Preferences window opens, displaying the last pane of options you accessed.

Figure 1. Choose Preferences from the Finder menu.

To set General Finder Preferences

1.	In the Finder Preferences window, click the General button to display General options (Figure 2). Figure 2. The default settings for General Finder preferences.
2.	Toggle check boxes to specify what items should appear on the desktop: Hard disks displays icons for mounted hard disks. CDs, DVDs, and iPods displays icons for removable media, including CDs and DVDs, as well as iPods. Connected servers displays icons for mounted server volumes.
3.	Choose an option from the pop-up menu (Figure 3) to determine what should appear in a new Finder window (the window that appears when you choose File > New Finder Window): Computer displays the icons for the network and all mounted volumes (Figure 4). Figure 4, 5, 6, & 7. A new Finder window can display the top-level computer window, your hard disk contents, your Home folder contents, or your Documents folder contents. Hard Disk name displays the root level of your hard disk (Figure 5). iDisk displays the top level of your iDisk. (This option only appears if you are a .Mac subscriber and use iDisk.) Home displays the contents of your Home folder (Figure 6). Documents displays the contents of the Documents folder inside your Home folder (Figure 7). Other displays the Choose a Folder dialog (Figure 8), which you can use to select a different folder to display. Figure 8. Use a dialog like this to display a specific folder when you open a new Finder window. Figure 3. Use this pop-up menu to specify what should appear in a new Finder window.
4.	Toggle check boxes to set other options: Always open folders in a new window opens a new window to display the contents of the folder you open. This makes Mac OS X work more like Mac OS 9.2 and earlier. Open new windows in column view opens all new windows in column view, regardless of which view was last used to view the window. Spring-loaded folders and windows enables the spring-loaded folders feature. You can use the slider to set the delay time for this feature.

Tip

• I discuss disks, mounting disks, and views in Chapter 3, spring-loaded folders in Chapter 4, and iDisk in Chapter 14.