Smart Folders, how to work with them in Mac OS X
Mac OS X is an operating system that has been designed with the goal to be as easy and productive for the user. Often, users of Mac we stayed at a somewhat superficial level of our system, where it has some very interesting features that we can exploit to our daily lives with him.
One of these features, found in Mac OS X version from the Tiger, is the use of “smart folders”. Explained in a very fast, using an analogy well known by all, we could say that the smart folders in the Finder are what the “smart playlists” are on iTunes.
These are special folders that act as “filters” to conditions specified by the user. Actually, these folders do not contain any files “physically” but are merely recipients of the outcome of the filter applied to them.
For example, we can create a smart folder whose contents are “all files from my Mac containing the word ‘Peter’.” Instantly we will see how the folder is filled with all the files that meet this condition. And best of all: we can treat those files as if “physically” they were there.
What can we use this? For many things, although one of the most commonly used is the grouping of certain files in one place. For example, imagine that we have ten folders with photos of our vacation, and we want to make a compilation of the best. The only thing we have to do is dial the selected photos with the tag “blue” (right-click on the file / Label) and then create a smart folder that filters through files labeled in blue.
At the entrance we saw a few days ago about moving files in an efficient way, what we used to move various files that are located in different folders, as if they were one, filtering on a particular condition.
To begin using all the advantages of smart folders, just have to click on Finder: File / New Folder intelligent …
This will create a special folder that contains a bar conditions at the top. In it, specify where the results we seek and add the conditions that we want by clicking on the plus sign (+) on the right. We also may even save the smart folder in the sidebar of Finder to be able to have it handy in the future.
.. and then chose the color “blue” in it. As you will see, the folder is filled instantly with all the files that meet the condition, and we can work with them as if that were your original folder.
With this method, you can have collections of files from various folders in a single, with no duplicate. However, remember that if you delete, move or change any attribute of the files listed in a smart folder, it will change their originals.
Some ideas
While all this seems very simple, you can get to get things really useful, here you get some examples that use personally:
Get all the documents recently modified (in the filter “yesterday,” but you can filter for days or even weeks):
We can even filter photos by the model of the camera with which they were made, in this example, all the pictures I’ve done with the iPhone:
