Top 5 MAC FILE ORGANIZATION Hacks to Revolutionize Your Workflow

0:00 Does finding files and documents on your Mac often feel like a frustrating game of hide and go seek. You don't know where to look. You're overwhelmed by duplicates, and the only way you can solve the problem is by searching and crossing your fingers and hoping you find the right file. If that sounds like you, it's time to get your Mac organized. The MacWhisperer way. I am Dylan Stewart, the MacWhisperer, and in today's video I'm going to give you a step-by-step guide on how to organize your Mac. You're going to learn where to put your most important files and how to organize your folders so you can always find whatever you're looking for without even having to search.

0:45 Make sure to stick around for my MacWhisperer Power tip, where I reveal a tool that makes it easy to get to any folder. With just one click. In order to get organized, we're going to need to create a home for all of our stuff, but we don't just want to make one home. We're actually going to create two homes that work together. The first place is for files you're working on right now, current projects, things that you need immediate and instant access to because you're working on them. And for all of those files, we're going to use the desktop. The desktop was always intended as a quick and easy place to sort and organize the files you're working on. The first thing we need to do is identify what is important on your desktop and

1:32 what needs to be put into storage. When you look at your desktop, it may be a disorganized mess, like what you see here. One of my favorite tools to organize the desktop is called stacks. To do that, take your arrow and right click anywhere on the desktop itself from the popup menu. Choose where it says Use stacks, and when you do, it'll take all of your loose documents. And pile them up on top of each other just like this. As soon as we do this, we can see that all of my screenshots are in one place. Clicking on that screenshot stack will open up those screenshots so I can see them individually. Over here, we'll see all of my documents. Again, clicking on the document stack expands it so I can see all of the separate documents. And the same is true of the images stack, the movie stack.

2:20 And the PDF stack, each of these stacks is showing a bunch of files that previously were scattered all over the desktop like this. Using Stacks mimics organization. It's not actually helping you get organized, but it's helping you find your files easier because you're not having to hunt through a mess like this. So get started by right clicking. And turning on stacks just like that. Once you've done that, the best thing you can do is go stack by stack and decide whether those documents, images, or files are something you still need or something you've completed. If it's a completed project and you don't need those files, you can just drag them right to the trash. It's easy to put things in the trash by right clicking on them and choosing

3:07 move to trash by clicking on them and dragging them into your trash like this. Or by using the keyboard shortcut command plus delete, just like that. Command delete is one of my favorite keyboard shortcuts because it makes it so easy to clear things off , and just put them right into the trash without any complication. Once you've done a little bit of exploring through your desktop, we need to talk about the other folder. The other folder is your filing cabinet. Think of it as your long-term storage folder, and there are several cloud storage solutions we can use to solve this problem. First off, there's Dropbox. Dropbox is great because not only is it a standard system that almost every app and program can utilize, but it can be set up and integrated into your finder.

3:57 The second option is Microsoft's OneDrive. Microsoft's OneDrive comes with your Microsoft Office 365 subscription, meaning you're probably already paying for it if you use Microsoft Word or Excel. Next up, you can use Google Drive to organize your files. Now, I'm not a huge fan of using Google Drive for storage. I find that Google Drive is phenomenal for collaboration, but it's really complicated to organize. Which brings us to the fourth cloud storage solution and the one that is most likely the right choice for all of you. And that's Apple's iCloud Drive. iCloud is built into every Apple device and it synchronizes things seamlessly and easily. Come into your system settings here and click on iCloud and click on the

4:42 option that says Drive iCloud Drive will automatically synchronize all of the files on your desktop and in your documents folders with iCloud. So if you'd like to use iCloud Drive, that means that your storage folder is going to be your documents folder inside of drive. Let's open up our finder here and go to iCloud Drive down in this section. By clicking on iCloud Drive, we're going to see a ton of different folders, but the most important one is this Documents folder. And the reason is because if you use iCloud itself to begin your files, things are going to be a little disorganized perpetually. You see iCloud, synchronizes with all sorts of different applications like GarageBand or numbers. Or pages or even shortcuts, which means that you can't really take full control

5:31 of all of the files in iCloud Drive. But if you select the documents folder as your long-term storage location, it's going to make it easy for you to get organized and access those files from anywhere. Now that we've decided on our cloud storage folder, it's time to gather the files together. Keep in mind that many of us have a Dropbox account and a Google Drive account, and a Microsoft OneDrive account and an iCloud account, which means that your files might be scattered all over the internet in all of these separate cloud-based locations, what we're going to do is pick one cloud service to put all of our files in. This doesn't mean that you're never going to use Dropbox or you're

6:16 never going to use Google Drive. It means that the vast majority of the files that you need to organize and find on a regular basis are in one place instead of in multiple places. You can still use Google Drive and you can still use Dropbox, but when you're done with that project or that file no longer needs to be left there, you're going to migrate it into whatever your cloud storage solution is. The problem with gathering all your documents is that they're scattered all over the place. So what you're going to need to do is hunt around some of the most common places that things get lost. So let's open up our finder and come down to the location section and click on our Macintosh Hard Drive. If you don't see the Macintosh Hard Drive there, come up to your finder menu here. Go to settings and under the sidebar section, make sure

7:04 that hard drives is turned on. Once you've done that, you should see a folder that looks something like this. A well organized hard drive will only have four folders in it. The applications folder, which is where all your programs live. The library and systems folder, which is where the computer stores the files that it needs, and your users' folder, which is where you'll find all of your personal information inside the user's folder. You should find a home folder with your name. Inside of there, you'll find a bunch of other file locations that you should take a quick look through. For example, the Downloads folder is a commonplace that people leave a ton of junk. When you're on Safari Chrome or Firefox and you download a file, the default location is this downloads folder, which means that it can quickly get

7:52 cluttered with a bunch of things that you downloaded today, yesterday. Or 10 years ago. The Downloads folder is really a terrible place to store your files, partially because it's a local file that doesn't synchronize with the cloud, but also because as you download more things, they're going to keep adding into this file, making it impossible to keep it organized. So once you've selected where your cloud storage location will be, come into your downloads folder and take a look through each of the files. A little power tip for you when you are looking at a file if you need to see it larger rather than double clicking on it, which will cause an application to open, which might take forever. Let's open up this Microsoft Word document here and watch as I open it. Word bounces down on the docks several times, and I'm just sitting here

8:39 waiting for that file until it finally. Opens up for me. There's an easier way to look at files and it's called Quick Look. To do that, click on any file inside the finder and press the space bar on your keyboard to zoom into it. This works on images, it works on documents. It works on video files, and it even works on music or audio files. Take a look through this Downloads folder and also look through the pictures folder. The pictures folder should not have a lot of clutter. It should have your photos library and maybe a couple of other files. But if you see loose pictures there, old photographs, old images. Consider taking them and dragging them into the Photos app so that they get added to your photo library, and then you can remove those files and throw them away.

9:26 As you look through your hard drive, you're going to find all sorts of locations like this. If you've got Dropbox connected to your Finder, explore your Dropbox files or your OneDrive files, or your Google Drive files . All you have to do is take any document and just drag it into your documents folder on the sidebar in order to begin organizing and storing it. Now that we've taken all of our files and folders and consolidated them into your cloud storage location, it's time to clean up that folder so you can find things easily. One of the problems that people have is they love to create folder after folder after folder. So in any one of these locations, you're going to find tons and tons and tons of folders, but while these files are organized alphabetically or by date, they aren't really collected together in a logical way, rather than having all

10:15 sorts of loose files, I propose that we use what I call my five folder fix. And the five folder fix means that you're going to create. Approximately five generic folders and use those to capture all of the other files that you've got. You can choose anything for your five folders, but they should be generic categories rather than specific files. For example, if I've got a folder of invoices and a folder of receipts and a folder of tax documents, rather than having those three folders left loose, I'm going to create a folder called financial or money and put all three of them into it. Rather than having a separate file for my daughter and for my son, and for my parents, and for my wife, I'm going to create a folder called family. So take a look at the different files that you've got and

11:02 let's create your five folders. To do that, you can come up to your toolbar right here. You create a new folder. You can also create a new folder by coming to the file menu and selecting new folder or using the keyboard shortcut shift plus command plus N. When you create a new folder, it's already ready for you to title it. You do not need to delete anything or click anywhere. You can see that it's highlighted in blue and all I have to do is type right onto it. As we create our five folders, I recommend adding a space at the beginning of the title so that alphabetically, these folders separate themselves up to the top. We're going to start by creating my financial folder just like this . So now I can go through any of the files that I see that I know are related to finance.

11:48 I'm going to grab these tax documents and drop them right into there. There's bank statements that can go into there and there's accounting and that can go into there. Go top to bottom one folder at a time and find everything you can that fits into that folder. Don't worry if the financial folder is a little disorganized at first. Once you've gotten your five folders set up, you can go through each of the five folders and do another layer of organization creating another five folders inside for sub folders that separate out accounting versus taxes versus receipts versus invoices, or whatever files you need to create. As I continue to look through these pieces, I can see that I need a personal folder as well. So I'm going to come right back up to my new folder icon here.

12:34 I. And press the space bar and type the word personal. As we create each of our five folders, they stay up at the top, allowing us to easily find anything that we need and drag it into the proper folder. Another power tip that you can use to organize your files quickly is to take your finder window and open a second finder window. By doing this, you can have two side-by-side windows making it even easier for you to move stuff from one file into the other one. Let's take our right finder window and let's point it to the documents folder. This way we can see our five folders right up at the top on the left side. We're going to leave that on documents, but as we scroll around, we can see things and drag them into the right location without scrolling up and down.

13:19 As you continue to do this, you'll carve through that documents folder until you end up with a storage location. With just five or so folders. Let's take a look at my Dropbox folder, which is what I use for my long-term storage. And you can see right here there's no loose files and everything's clean and organized. We've got our money files, we've got our documents files, we've got stuff for my family. We've got any image files that I use, including funny memes or other things like that. We've got all the research I've done on different projects and even a "To Sort" folder. Which we'll talk about in just a few minutes. By taking just a little bit of time and creating your five folders inside of your cloud storage solution and moving everything into those folders, you can create an organized and streamlined system that is easy

14:09 to find files from, from anywhere. So as you can see, the two important pieces of this system are to use your desktop. Only for the things that you're working on right now, the current projects, the things you need immediate and constant access to, and choose a cloud storage solution like Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, or iCloud to organize all your files for long-term storage. So how are we doing so far? Did you learn some new tools and tricks? Are you excited and ready to get in and start organizing? If you've already had an aha moment and can't wait to get started, give this video a thumbs up so that other people who are struggling like you were, can have this video to help them find their way through. And if you've got a question, a comment, something you don't understand or

14:56 something you need more information about, drop it in the comments section. I love to hear from you guys, and I respond to every message that you send. And if you haven't subscribed to my channel yet, why are you wasting your time? Click that subscribe button in that notify bell so I can deliver powerful tools like this and other organization tips about how to use your Apple devices efficiently. If you hit that notify Bell, you'll always be alerted whenever I drop new content. And now with that being said, ooh, it's getting electric in here. Let's jump into the power tip. All right. I bet I've created an organizational monster. You're just running through all of your files and putting things in folders and organizing it. You're so excited to understand that the desktop is only for current files, and

15:45 the documents folder, or your other cloud storage folder is for long-term storage. You're putting together your five folders. You aren't drowning in hundreds and hundreds of folders, and you know exactly where to go to find what you're looking for. But there's an issue. The issue is that sometimes the folder that you need access to on a regular basis is several folders deep inside your filing system. For example, for me, inside Dropbox, inside Work, inside the MacWhisperer is my admin folder. This is one of my key folders. So instead of having to go through all this nonsense, every time I need to get into that file, clicking on Dropbox, going to the work folder, going to the MacWhisperer folder, and going to admin. I'm going to take my last step and make it my first step by using what's called an alias.

16:31 An alias is a convenient way to take any folder or document and position it somewhere that's easier to access. There are three separate places on the Mac that aliases work perfectly. The first one is the sidebar. Every finder window has this sidebar on the left that's fully customizable. To add something to the favorite section, find the file and simply drag it over. Be careful not to drop it onto another folder. You want to make sure you've got the little line showing that that's where that folder's going to be located, and when you release it. That's exactly where it goes. You can always move it around if you need to, but from this point on, when I need to get in my admin folder, I'm just one click away and I can get right to business. But that's not the only place you can use aliases.

17:17 You can also use aliases with the dock down here, and you can use aliases on the dock for either folders or documents. So if there is a document that I'm using on a regular basis, like this letterhead document, I can take it and I can drag it to the right side of my dock. And just slide it right onto the dock here. Again, be careful not to put it inside of a folder. Make sure that your dock creates a little bit of room for it. It and then drop it right there. I want you to notice the original file is still sitting right here, so it's not like it created a duplicate, it just created a shortcut to make it easy for me to get to that document anytime I want. And if you want to remove an alias from the dock , you can either right click on it, go into options, and choose where it says, remove from dock or click and drag.

18:04 Hold it a little above the dock and let it go. When you put documents or folders on the dock, it makes it so easy to get right into that document anytime you need it. And when you're working with folders on the dock, it's even more convenient. Let's take the admin folder and drag and drop it right down on the dock here. The benefit to putting something on the dock, instead of just putting it on the desktop, is that the dock is always visible. Sometimes you can't see the desktop without moving windows out of the way. So if we put it on the dock, I can get to it even if I can't see the desktop. But the desktop is the third place that you can put an alias. You just have to do it in a very special way. Now for this example, I'm going to take my "To Sort" folder. Which is located inside of my Dropbox folder.

18:50 I use this to sort folder to take files once I'm completed with them on the desktop and drop them into my long-term storage where I organize them on a regular basis. To create an alias on the desktop press and hold the command and option buttons on your keyboard, and while you're holding them, you're going to drag the file you want to make an alias of to its location. So in this case. It's in Dropbox. I'm going to drag it onto my desktop at the right. Make sure you keep holding the command and option button down while you drag it, and you'll notice that it gives you this curved arrow. That curved arrow signifies that this is an alias. Notice that the "To Sort" folder is still where it was before in my Dropbox folder, but as I drop the "To Sort" alias on my desktop.

19:36 It gives me an easy way to come into any one of my stacks and take any of my completed documents and just drop them right into that to sort folder. Aliases are amazing on the desktop because not only can you use them to easily file things, but if you double click it, it opens up the folder so you can access the folder, even though technically it's living in your long-term storage. So by using aliases on your sidebar, on your dock or on your desktop, you can make it even easier to keep your files organized and make sure that the current files are on your desktop while the long-term storage files are automatically organized in your cloud storage solution. So that's what we've got for today's video. All about how to organize your Mac, the MacWhisperer way.

20:21 I hope you learned a ton, but remember, there's always more to learn. Check out this video over here for even more amazing tips and tricks on how to get organized and use your Apple devices properly. I'm Dylan Stewart, the MacWhisperer, and I'll see you in the comments.