10.5: Put Smart Folders under Places on the Sidebar

Mar 24, '09 07:30:03AM

Contributed by: outdevo

If you are like me, you have a lot of entries in the Places section of the sidebar in Leopard's Finder. What if you want a Smart Folder that aggregates your favorite/recent places (or provides any Smart Folder functionality), but you don't want to have to scroll down to the Search For section of the sidebar? In other words, you'd like to place your Smart Folders in the Places section of the sidebar.

By default, Apple disables moving Smart Folders to the Places category of the sidebar. So how do you get around this? Easily.

Take any saved search on the sidebar, Control-click on it and select Open Enclosing Folder from the pop-up menu. Then select your search and choose File » Make Alias, and drag the alias to your sidebar. Done!

[robg adds: I think this can be further simplified -- once the enclosing folder is visible, you can drag any of the visible Smart Folders directly to the Places section of the sidebar; no alias is required (at least not on my 10.5.6 machine it's not).]

Comments (6)


Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20090322232146955