Using the Finder

By Francine Schwieder

The Get Info Window

There is a wealth of information about your files, folders and drives available in the Get Info window pane. This is also where you can add a custom icon if you wish. You can also change the program used to open a particular file, or even all files of a particular type. You can add Spotlight comments here--although I really don't recommend doing this, as these comments can, and sometimes do, get lost. You can lock a file or folder, change the name, hide the extension, copy the location path or the Where From URL for downloaded items, and even monkey with the permissions (I don't recommend doing this either).

At the top is the most general information about a file, name, size, custom icon if present, modified and created date, label color, and boxes to check for stationary pad (can't say I have ever used this) and locking. Next is the More Info section, the contents of which vary wildly, depending on just what you have selected, and whether or not the item has been indexed by Spotlight. For an image file that has been indexed you will have at a minimum really basic information, as shown here. You can have a great deal more information, for instance you might have information about the camera used and the settings when the photo was taken.

As mentioned, downloaded items will have the URL showing where the item came from. A PDF file will show the number of pages, a music file might have the album name, the artist, codecs used to encode it, a movie file would have the duration and codecs used, and so on.

The Open with section will show the default program that opens this file. Click the double arrows and from the drop-down list you can select some other program to open the file. If you then click on the button to Change All, you will generate your own personal over-ride file, and from then on all files of that type will open with the program you selected. You may notice that the list for a common file type, such as a jpeg, is very long. If you have duplicate entries, but don't have duplicate copies of programs available on any connected volumes, you may need to rebuild your LaunchServices database, which can be done with the Terminal or with several different third party utilities, such as OnyX or Cocktail.

The Preview will show a large icon for a graphics file, and you can make it even larger by dragging the bottom corner of the window pane, although it will not go all the way to 512. For movie files you can mouse to the center, and click the play button that will appear to play the movie. Ditto for music files. You can click thru the pages of a PDF file, although the size is so small that most likely this is a pretty useless feature.

Many people are tempted to solve a permissions problem using the Sharing and Permissions section in Get Info. WARNING: you can very easily mess things up, and it is a very awkward and often completely ineffective way to fiddle with permissions. But it can be done. You first need to click the little padlock at the bottom and give your admin password, even for files that you own. You can then click the arrows to change read and write permissions, and if you click the + button you get the dialog box where you can add a user, then give that user whatever permissions you think are necessary. You can also delete users from the list. If you are working with a folder clicking the little gear icon disclosure triangle gives you the option to apply what you have set to all enclosed items. This can be a very serious mistake! Permissions issues are very technical and you are better off to consult an expert than to blunder about on your own in the Finder.

I mentioned you can change the generic icon to a custom one using Get Info. The commonest reason to do this is to customize folders and drives, so they are visually distinct. To accomplish this, you first need to click the wee little icon to select it, it will acquire a very thin and very faint outline to show that it is selected. You can then paste your custom icon. But where to get custom icons, and how do you copy them so you can paste them?

One easy solution is to select something that already has a custom icon, select said icon in the file's GetInfo pane, do copy, then switch to your destination, select and paste. The only problem is that often the custom icons are not gorgeous 512 icons, but something considerably smaller. A better solution is to open the image you want to use in Preview, select all, copy, and then paste that as your custom thumbnail. Below are two folders with custom icons: the photo of Seattle was opened in Preview, the orange was copied from the Photoshop custom thumbnail attached to an image file. Both were being displayed in Cover Flow.

A final note: Get Info displays one window pane for every file. Select 5 files, hit Command-i, and you get 5 GetInfos. If what you really want is information about the files collectively (for instance, you want the total size of ALL the files together), you need the Inspector. To access it you add the Option key to your shortcut. Another advantage of the Inspector is that you can move from one file or folder to another, and the contents of the Inspector window pane changes to whatever is selected--you have just one window instead of bunches of them.

Spotlight