| The control buttons you see in the toolbar at the top of the Finder aren't all you get; there's actually more to the toolbar than you have yet seen. One of the unique features of Mac OS X is that many applications have toolbars that can be customized with whatever set of control buttons you like. The Finder is one of these applications. Select Customize Toolbar from the View menu to see a sheet full of controls you can place in the Finder's toolbar. The Customize Toolbar sheet for the Finder.   TIP  the Hide Toolbar button (at the top right corner of the Finder window) to cycle through the various types of icons and labels you can usesmall or large icons, with or without labels. Adding the Option key (  ) opens the Customize Toolbar sheet.
To add any of the listed controls to the toolbar, simply drag them into place where you want them to appear. To remove a control from the toolbar, drag it off the window; it will disappear in a puff of smoke. If you put too many items on the toolbar for them all to be visible simultaneously , the ones that can't be shown are accessible by clicking an arrow at the right end of the toolbar. Feel free to experiment with these controls; you can arrange them any way you like, and you can always go back to the way it was before by dragging the "default set" of controls into the toolbar; this resets the controls to their factory settings. You can also use the controls at the bottom of the sheet to control whether the toolbar controls are shown as icons, as text labels, or as both. You can reduce the size of the buttons by enabling the Use Small Size check box. You can control another set of global Finder options in the Finder Preferences window. Open this dialog box by selecting Preferences from the Finder menu. The Finder Preferences window, showing the General, Labels, Sidebar , and Advanced panes.  Options you can configure in these panels include (as you have seen earlier) which types of storage devices you want to display on the Desktop as well as the following behaviors: | 1. | New Finder Windows Open Menu You can select whether opening a new Finder window starts you in your Home folder (the default behavior) or with the entire Computer view, which lets you see all the available disks and resources attached to your Mac. Because the Finder already shows you all the disks in the Sidebar, it's probably best to leave this option set to Home . NOTE An older Mac that has been upgraded to Mac OS X might have a lot of data folders at the top level of the hard disk. Instead of moving all these folders into your Home folder, you might prefer to configure the Finder to use the Computer view to access them more easily. | | 2. | Always Open Folders in a New Window Check Box
You can select to have each new folder open in a new window. Enabling this option is equivalent to holding down the Command key while you double-click a folder icon.
| | 3. | Open New Windows in Column View Check Box
You can choose to have all new folder windows open in Column view.
| | 4. | Spring-loaded Folders and Windows Check Box and Slider
Spring-loaded folders is a convenience feature that allows you to navigate through the folders in your disk while dragging a file at the same time. While holding down the mouse button and dragging a file icon, hover the mouse over a folder in the Finder; regardless of what view you're using, after a short delay the folder blinks and then pops open. You can then drop the file into that folder (and it will close), or you can drive still deeper into other folders using the same method. The slider in the Finder Preferences dialog box lets you control the length of the delay before the folder pops open.
| | 5. | Define Label Names
In the Labels pane, you can customize the names for each of the seven different colored labels available. For instance, if you like to use red labels for items that are urgent, you can change its name from Red to Urgent . The new label name will appear in all textual representations of the label in the Finder, such as in the Label column in List view. For more about labels, see 18 Set a Color Label .
| | 6. | Select Sidebar Names
The Sidebar pane lets you select which kinds of media (disks, servers, and other data sources) as well as which folders or documents will appear in the Finder's Sidebar. Use the check boxes to enable or disable the indicated items. The options you select here do not affect items you drag into the Sidebar manually.
| | 7. | Show Warning Before Emptying the Trash Check Box
In the Advanced pane, you can turn off the warning that appears when you empty the Trash, permanently deleting whatever items are in it.
| | 8. | Show All File Extensions Check Box
If you want, you can choose to show filename extensions under all circumstances, even if the extension is hidden. This can be useful if you do a lot of cross-platform work and don't want to be confused about whether a file has a hidden extension that will appear when transferred to a Windows or Unix system, or whether it has no extension at all. However, because the hiding of a file's extension can be toggled on and off simply by renaming the file and adding or removing an extension as appropriate, this option is probably not likely to be useful unless you're a hardcore purist.
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