10 Essential Keyboard Shortcuts for the Open & Save Dialog in Mac OS X
Jul 6, 2012 - 6 Comments
The next time you end up in an Open or Save dialog window in Mac OS X, try out a few of these helpful keyboard shortcuts to make navigating around the dialog and filesystem much faster:
- Spacebar – View the selected item in Quick Look
- Command+D – Selects Desktop as the destination
- Command+Shift+H – Sets the Home directory as the destination
- Command+Shift+A – Sets Applications directory as the destination
- Command+Shift+. – Toggle invisible items
- Command+Shift+G – Bring up Go To Folder window
- Tab – Tab key auto-completes paths and file names from the aforementioned Go To window
- Command+R – Open the selected item in the Finder
- Command+F – Move the cursor to the Find field
- Command+. – Close the Open/Save dialog window
Know any other great keyboard shortcuts or usability tips for the open/save dialog windows in OS X? Let us know in the comments!
You can also simply type / to bring up the “Go to the folder:” box.
Command+Shift+N creates a New Folder
Command+Shift+C goes to the main Computer selection letting you select networked machines, other hard drives, external devices and more.
Command+I opens the selections Get Info box
Save dialog: click on any (grayed-out) file name in the list to copy it into the Save/Save As field.
Paul, please add what JamesC said to the main article. I’m using the ‘/’ shortcut all the time — it is so much easier to remember than ‘Command+Shift+G’. After all, when you want to go to ‘/Applications/…’ you’d have to start typing a ‘/’ anyway, isn’t it?
You can also start by typing ~ to start a path in your home folder.
Command+Backspace selects do not save