Snow Leopard – Command click a Title for quick navigation

Command click the name of a document in the Title Bar (in some apps) to see exactly where the file is saved and open that folder in the Finder in a flash, revealing the file.

Each week I make a small QuickTime movie for my own records. It’s somehow always saved in the wrong place, but I can find it and move the file in the Finder with ease using the Command click trick. Here’s how.

This trick works for documents you save, such as text files or graphics. It’s not the same at all in apps that simply display files, such as web browsers. Also, I haven’t tested this with Microsoft apps, such as Word and Excel, which have a tradition of not doing things ‘the Mac way’.

[tab:Save a file]

First save a file

If you write a letter or make a spreadsheet, create a graphic or write an AppleScript then you’ll probably deliberately save that document at some point. Just for the purposes of illustration I’ll make a TextEdit file for this Tip.

My new TextEdit document is unsaved and untitled.

When you make a new document in most apps it is named untitled, as you can see in my screenshot of an unsaved TextEdit document. The name is displayed in the Title Bar at the top of the window.

Try it now with an app you commonly use for writing letters or making spreadsheets or the like.

[tab:Save the document]

Save the document

After you save the document the file name is displayed in the Title Bar. I called mine my-test-document.

After saving the file name is displayed in the Title Bar.

[tab:Click the Title Bar]

Command click the name in the Title Bar

If you only just saved the document then you probably know where you saved it. But maybe you opened it from Recent Items or for some other reason don’t know where it is. That’s where Command (⌘) click comes in.

Hold down the Command (⌘) key — and keep holding it — and click on the name in the Title Bar.

Command click on the name to see a list of enclosing folders.

A dropdown list appears that shows all the enclosing folders for that document.

Be sure to Command (⌘) click on the name, rather than on the icon or the tiny triangle to the right of the name (in Lion). I’ll explain those items in other Tips.

In my screenshot you can see that my document is named my-test-document.txt. It’s inside a series of folders, namely: Demo - miraz - Users - Macintosh HD - Perseus-Arm (2).

That’s handy information in itself, but it gets better -- you can open those folders from here too.

[tab:Open Folder by Its Name]

Open a folder by letting go on its name

In the previous step I said: Hold down the Command (⌘) key — and keep holding it. So now slide down the list to one of the folders and let go on that folder.

The folder I selected opened in the Finder.

For my screenshot I selected the Macintosh HD folder and it opened up in the Finder.

The Control (⌃) key works too

In my tests I found the the Control (⌃) key worked equally well, as did right-clicking on the name in the Title Bar.

Every week when my QuickTime movie saves in the wrong folder I use this technique to easily locate it inside its enclosing folder. I rename the file (because it also saves it with an incorrect file name) and move it to my preferred folder. When I do that the name in the Title Bar updates itself.

This is an incredibly handy little trick. Try it out.

[tab:END]

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