Changing Mac Finder Search Behavior

February 13, 2022 6:51 AM

I have a search bar on the top of my Mac Finder window. If I enter a phrase and search say my Dropbox, the results will show up first in a window that has "This Mac" tab highlighted and the Dropbox folder section adjacent to it. I have to click on the word "Dropbox" to see the results. Is there any way to change this behavior so the default results are the folder I originally selected and not "this Mac"? This is driving me crazy.
posted by captainscared to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Best answer: Open Finder, Select Finder in the menu bar, Select Preferences, At the bottom of the window under "When performing a search:" select "Search the Current Folder"

I have no idea why the default behavior is the way it is. It makes no sense to me, either.
posted by AaRdVarK at 7:04 AM on February 13, 2022 [17 favorites]

Response by poster: OMG I love you. Thank you.
posted by captainscared at 7:06 AM on February 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

I did not know I needed to know this, but I did. thank you AaRdVarK!

Here's a tangent, not directly answering the question, but I kinda feel that people reading this thread might like this.

I just bought Alfred, a nice alternative to the Spotlight search. It's mapped to option ⌥ - spacebar (Spotlight holds command ⌘ - space)

I've just scratched the surface, but for nerds that think about search its very cool, and it's always nice to support alternative products.

I mostly have it because with all my data, spotlight sometimes just doesn't work, or is very slow. I use it mostly to launch apps, but I'm gonna learn how to google search and create all kinds of shortcuts, one of these days.

Hope this is ok to post. Good to know there's an alternative, at least.
posted by svenni at 10:26 AM on February 13, 2022 [1 favorite]