Secrets of the proxy icon in a program's title bar

Mar 16, '10 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: nathanator11

You can perform many useful tasks using the icon in the title bar of many OS X applications (known as the proxy icon), in both Apple-bundled (TextEdit, Preview, etc.) and third party (BBEdit, Path Finder, and numerous others) applications.

For this to work, you need to be using a file that has had its latest changes saved (otherwise, the icon will be grayed out). Normally, when you click-and-drag on the title bar of a window, you just drag the window around. However, if you click-and-hold directly on the proxy icon, and optionally add a modifier key, you can access other useful functions. Here's what happens in most applications, including TextEdit and Preview:

[robg adds: These features have been in OS X for many many years. We've covered copy (relative to Preview, at least) and path in the past, but not the straight drag of the icon, at least that I could find. Given the information was scattered in a couple hints about specific apps, I thought I'd use this chance to create a new consolidated summary version.

Note that third party apps may behave differently. In my limited testing, Path Finder behaved like TextEdit, but BBEdit does a move of the file if you just drag the icon; you need to Command-Option drag the proxy icon to create an alias. Please add comments for other non-normal behaviors in apps that I didn't test.]

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Mac OS X Hints
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