Command-Click in Finder Window to Get Path & Navigate to Enclosing Folders
Need to quickly see where you are in the Finder by showing the current windows path on a Mac?
There are a few ways to do this in Mac OS X, for example you can use a defaults command to show the full path in Finder window title, and we’ll show you another couple of great tricks that are super easy to display the path itself at all times.
First, you may be aware that you can show the path bar in Mac Finder windows to always see the current path to folders on the Mac. That method was discussed by Lifehacker, who posted the following Mac tip about including a specific Path button in Finder windows:
“One of my main complaints about Mac’s Finder versus Windows Explorer is the inability to move up and down a folder tree easily. However, Finder’s Path button lets you do just that. The Path button isn’t included on the Finder toolbar by default, but you can add it by Ctrl-clicking and choosing “Customize Toolbar.” Then drag and drop the Path button – which kind of looks like a staircase – onto the toolbar. From there, use it to see where you are in the folder tree, and move up to enclosing folders in a click.”
That will enable a path button and it’s a great tip, but… there is an easier way to see the path details, and even navigate within the file system through the path structure: Just Command-Click on the Finder window’s titlebar to get the same path on the Mac.
Command + Click on Finder Titlebars to see the Directory Path on Mac
You can then select any of the directories within the pulldown path menu to instantly jump to that directory. Keep in mind that you can navigate down to parent directories this way, but not to child directories, which is best handled through the traditional Mac OS X File browser (you know, just double-clicking a folder to open it like usual).
This nifty path trick also works in some other applications too, particularly the ones from Apple, but many third party developers also include the support in their own Mac apps too. Try it out!
Want to learn more? Don’t miss these 9 tricks for improving your Mac file system experience and to help master the Finder in Mac OS X, you’ll be close to power user status in no time.
We’ve received several questions asking how to block specific sites from being accessed directly on the Mac. The frustration seems to lie in how easy it is to circumvent the typical measures, such as setting Parental Controls and blocking sites in Safari, only to have them accessed in Camino or Firefox. Well, a quick and efficient way to block access to specified sites is by editing the /etc/hosts file, which has the added bonus of providing system wide results. Whether it’s children or your roommate who you’re trying to stop from visiting a particular website, here’s how to do it.
It’s long been known that Mac OS X 10.5 is due out sometime this year, but when exactly nobody knows and speculation on the release date has been all over the board. SwitchtoaMac.com uses empirical evidence to suggest that Leopard will be released in May, but they go a step further and predict the exact date: May 11, 2007. How they arrive at that date is interesting, if you enjoy the rumors and speculation game then it’s worth a glance.
Everyone enjoys a cool desktop background and OSXPlanet just might take the cake for its automatically updating planet wallpaper. You can choose any of the nine planets (eight if you’re anti-Pluto) and have them displayed as your background. Perhaps the most impressive is with our very own planet Earth, which you can set to display an automatically updated map showing where the sun is shining, where it’s night time, as well as current weather patterns. It’s an effect you really have to see for yourself, so check out the screenshots below and download OSXPlanet. The app is free so you have nothing to lose.
You’ve probably noticed by now that we frequently rave about Spotlight, an invaluable tool and one of the greatest features of Mac OS X. Although it’s main intention is to be an instant search utility for documents, pictures, music, emails, whatever, it also works wonders as a super quick application launcher (often I will use Spotlight more than the Dock for this purpose). 
Dashboard is the kind of thing you either love or hate, using the widgets constantly or not at all. How much use you get out of Dashboard will probably determine if you want the feature to stick around in Mac OS X or not. As regular readers may recall, we have discussed how unused Dashboard widgets can take up a lot of memory and slow your systems performance on older Macs running versions of OS X prior to more modern releases with better memory management (think Leopard, not Mavericks), and we also showed you how to reclaim that memory by terminating the individual processes. But of course users can choose to go further, and this is relevant to all versions of OS X, so for those that don’t use Dashboard or its widget features at all, we’ll show you how to disable Dashboard completely (but don’t worry, it is just as easy to enable again should you change your mind).
I like Dashboard a lot, I really do, but it can be an awful memory hog even when it’s not being used. Once you hit F12, the widgets are loaded and don’t quit automatically which makes accessing them later faster, but it also wastes system resources. It’s not uncommon for each widget to take up 15mb of real ram and over 300mb in virtual memory. Having a bunch of widgets open aimlessly in the background can lead to system slowdowns, so here are three different ways to free up memory and kill the Dashboard temporarily.
According to 
Brian W. asks the following great question:
