GETTING TO THE GOODIES FAST

Want fast access to the most commonly used icon-related tasks? Just Control-click directly on an icon and a pop-up menu appears with a list of tasks you’re likely to take advantage of at one time or another.

CHANGING A FILE’S ICON

Just as in previous versions of the Mac OS, if you don’t like a file’s icon, you can change it. To copy an icon from one file to another, just click on the icon you want to copy and press Command-I to bring up its info window. In the General section, click on the tiny icon to the left of the file’s name then press Command-C to copy that icon into memory. Then, go to the file whose icon you’d like to replace, press Command-I to bring up its info window, click on the existing tiny little icon, then just press Command-V to paste the new icon over the old icon. There you go.

DON’T LIKE YOUR NEW CUSTOM ICON? CHANGE IT BACK

If you’ve added a custom icon to one of your files and later grow tired of it, just click on the icon, press Command-I then press Command-X, and the file’s original icon will pop back into place.

COPYING AND DELETING AT THE SAME TIME

If you’re archiving a file to disk, you can drag the icon of the file you want to archive directly to that drive and the Mac will write a copy to that drive. However, your original file still lives on your current hard drive. If you want to have that file deleted from your drive as soon as it’s copied to another drive, just hold the Command key as you drag your icon, and Mac does two tasks for you – it copies the file to the new drive, and deletes the original from your drive.

NEW FOLDER SPEED TIP

Need another folder to store your files but refuse to use the new keyboard shortcut Shift-Command-N? You have two choices: Either click on the Action button and choose New Folder or just Control-click on an empty space in any Finder window, and then choose New Folder from the pop-up menu.

CLEANING UP WINDOWS ONE ICON AT A TIME

Want to bring some order back to your icons? Just hold the Command key while dragging any icon and when you release the mouse button it automatically snaps to an invisible alignment grid helping once again to keep your icon tidy and organized. See Mac OS X cares. Another way to “clean up”, icon by icon is to click on the icon you want aligned and then choose Clean Up Selection from the View menu.