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Stupid Sidebar Tricks
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A couple keys on the keyboard can get you precisely what you want when you’re flying through the Finder.
This Snippet also shows you how to add a printer to your Sidebar.
More on the Sidebar in a previous post.
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9 comments to “Stupid Sidebar Tricks”
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19. December 2006 at 7:01 am :
Thanks for this - probably a stupid question, and I’m can’t try this for myself till I get home, but why can’t you just drag the printer to the sidebar directly, without going via another window first? That would seem more intuitive.
Is this just a Finder “feature” ?!
19. December 2006 at 1:51 pm :
>>why can’t you just drag the printer to the sidebar directly, without going via another window first? That would seem more intuitive.<<
Strangely, it just doesn’t seem to work that way. Although you can drag the printer directly INTO a Sidebar item, which will create an alias for the printer inside that Finder folder. For whatever reason printers aren’t something you can add to the Sidebar, but an alias is.
-Murph
14. February 2007 at 4:48 am :
You can drag a printer to the Finder toolbar, which still works in Tiger even if Apple doesn’t seem to advertise it any more. Personally I keep locations (folders and volumes) in the sidebar and drag targets (apps and printers) in the toolbar.
14. February 2007 at 5:49 pm :
Select a file Apple + t ! Its a tab! well almost… It just needed a remove last sidebar shortcut to really work :{
14. February 2007 at 8:40 pm :
You can also drag them to your dock for the same effect !
10. July 2010 at 2:31 am :
Sweet tip. Works like a charm.
23. September 2010 at 4:32 am :
I am running Mac OSX Snow Leopard. I could not find the printer setup utility in the Utilities folder under applications. Neither did a Spotlight search find one.
How does one do this trick in Snow Leopard
21. January 2011 at 1:36 am :
I’m running the latest 10.6.6 and simply opened “Print & Fax” and, after dragging the printer I wanted to the desktop, I just dragged the resulting icon to “PLACES” in the sidebar. I’m not sure why it doesn’t work dragging it directly there from “Print & Fax”, but I’m sure there’s a long and very logical rationale for this that could be posted here by someone that understands these things.
22. February 2011 at 6:50 am :
Thanks Shawn. System Preferences -> Print&Fax was the answer for 10.6. Answer to your question is above - dragging to the desktop or folder creates an alias. As Murphy says “For whatever reason printers aren’t something you can add to the Sidebar, but an alias is.” But you can’t drag the alias to the dock.
Don’t worry, found that continuing in the Sys Prefs to “Open Print Queue” for the appropriate printer puts the icon in the dock, then Cmd-click(right click) shows “Options” - choose “Keep in Dock”.