May, 2005 Macworld magazine had a nifty trick in it, but they didn't realize (or forgot to mention) the real power of it. So I will.

First, the simple part: the sidebar on page 88 ("Tricks of the Toolbar") says you can add anything you want to the Finder window's toolbar simply by dragging it there just like you would to put it in the sidebar. However, you have to wait a second or two, until the cursor changes to the standard + symbol, before you can add an item to the toolbar. (So much for consistency.)

OK, that's fun, but what good is "one more place" to put icons? Well, the power is that just like the other places, these toolbar icons respond to drag and drop operations. Since I'm constantly inspecting files with BBEdit, I put BBEdit in my toolbar. Now it is a very short mouse drag from any file I'm looking at, regardless of where the Finder window is on the desktop. I stuck Mail in there too and, sure enough: drag a file onto Mail and a new mail message is opened with the dropped file as an attachment. Too slick.

Folders work too, but if you use the 'icon only' setting, every folder looks like every other one. Besides, it seems to me that folders properly belong in the sidebar.

So now I can put my 'navigation items' in the sidebar, my common apps and documents in the dock, and my drag and drop power tools in the toolbar.

Comments

TigerLaunch is also cool. I put the apps I "always" have open on my Dock and let TigerLaunch take care of the apps I access "less often"

... but of course you can't drag and drop with it.

http://ranchero.com/tigerlaunch/

(Another Faster Access To Useful Apps trick) -- Ryan Wilcox at 11:45:08 04/07/05