Applications & Files

Activity 3

Let's dive deeper into navigating our Mac and organising our files & applications.

The Finder Application

Finder is a special application on your Mac, and perhaps the most important. Finder allows you to navigate through the folders & files on your computer. It is very similar to the PC equivalent, called Windows Explorer.

To open Finder, click the very first icon on your Dock.

Task 1. Finder Playground

  1. Click on this link to download the "Finder Playground". It's a series of dummy files and folders to play with so you can get used to the Finder interface.
  2. Open a Finder window by clicking on the Finder icon on the Dock.
  3. In the window that appears, down the left hand side, click "Downloads" to browse to the folder where downloaded files are stored.
  4. Double click on the zip file called Activity3-FinderPlayground.zip. It will 'unpack' the file and reveal a new folder called Activity3-FinderPlayground. Double click on the folder to open it.

Now that we have navigated to the new 'playground' folder, we can explore some of the different ways you can view and organise files & folders in Finder. See how many of these you can find.

Use the 'view' buttons at the top to change how you see the files.

Move files around by clicking & holding, then dragging them to the new location.

Select multiple files by holding command or shift

Once selected, you can drag them to move them somewhere else, or right click on one to perform a function on all of the selected files.

Click a file once to highlight it, then press enter to quickly rename the file

'Tag' a file or folder with one or more colours

You can then access any file tagged with a particular colour from the left hand side of any Finder window.

Click a photo once to highlight it, then press space bar to 'Quick Look'.

This also works to preview Word documents, hear Mp3s, and preview other files without actually opening them.

Open folders in new tabs, just like opening new tabs on a browser

Customise how Finder works from its Preferences screen

Task 2. Folder Structure

Now that we are comfortable working with files and folders, it's important to take a step back and get an overview of the folder structure of a Mac.

  1. Open Finder
  2. From the "Go" menu on the Menu Bar, select "Home" to open your Home Folder.

Your home folder is where everything belonging to your user account is stored. If you have multiple user accounts on your Mac (e.g. for a child or spouse), each user has their own home folder which is private to them.

It is not recommended to store anything right inside this folder - instead, store your files in one of the folders already in your home folder. They are described in the below images.

Explore the side-bar (left hand side) of your Finder window, and the Go menu, as a way of traversing between folders.

Task 3. AirDrop

Apple devices can easily share files between each other using AirDrop. AirDrop uses a combination of Wifi & Bluetooth to connect to nearby devices.

This is especially useful if you have just taken a photo on your iPhone and want to edit or store it on your Mac, or if you have students using iPads and want them to 'hand in' their work to your computer.

Use this guide on Apple to try out AirDrop. You will need a 2nd Apple device to test with - either iPhone, iPad, or Mac.

Task 4. Installing Apps with the App Store

Just like iPhone and iPad, Macs have an App Store. It is not the only way to install apps on your Mac, but it is the safest.

Open the App Store from your Dock, or by searching with Spotlight (command+Space).

The App Store requires an Apple ID. You may already have one.

All installed apps on your Mac are located in the Applications folder. You can access that folder in a number of ways:

  1. From Launchpad in your dock
  2. Finder > Go menu > Applications (or the keyboard shortcut - command+shift+A)
  3. Open a Finder window, and click Applications from the left hand side.

You can also drag applications from this folder into your Dock to keep them there even when they are not open.

Uninstalling an application is usually as simple as deleting the application file from the applications folder, then emptying your trash.

Task 5. 'Nifty Apps'

Lastly in this activity, we want to draw your attention to some useful apps that are included with your Mac (or freely available from the App Store). Watch the videos below to see them demonstrated!

Preview

mac_preview.mp4

Note-taking Apps

mac_notetaking_optimised.mp4