Love them or hate them, the Mac is loaded with pop up dialog boxes. Most of the time we see them in Open and Save. To be honest, there isn’t much dialog going on here. The Finder’s Sidebar helps us to navigate our Mac’s files and folders, either to find a file to open, or a place to save a file. Views are improved. We can view files in Column view, List view, Icon view or CoverFlow (pure eye candy). That’s about it. The dialog box needs to do more and it can with the right Mac app.
Ask, And Ye Shall Receive
Default Folder X is my choice app for extending the dialog box to something useful. Here’s what the Mac’s dialog box looks like in Lion:
That’s what you call utilitarian. It works, but it’s nothing to write home about.
To add more functionality to the pop up dialog box on your Mac, add Default Folder X. This utility frames the standard dialog box with useful tools that you’ll need whenever you encounter the Mac’s dialog box.
Here’s what Default Folder X looks like wrapped around the dialog box.
The charcoal area round the dialog box comes with extra tools. For example, you can name, rename, delete, archive files without leaving the dialog box.
The Rebound function pops you back to the last item you selected (regardless of how many files are in a folder). It even remembers which folders are used with which apps. Click on a file and Get Info about the file.
Click on the D Default Folder icon in the right of the menu and get more options. Click on the Mac icon on the right and drill down to any location on any folder to find any file without a click.
Those extra functions are available when you need them most, and Apple doesn’t provide them in the default pop up dialog box. You won’t have to close down, go to the Finder to find information or make changes to a file or folder.
This is one utility that quickly becomes indispensable on the serious Mac user’s Mac.