Quickly open Home and Desktop folders

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Sun, Feb 10 2002 at 12:09PM PST • Contributed by: ksujeff99

I found this accidently a while back and use it all the time. Not sure if it is well known or not. While in the Finder with the cursor on "Desktop focus" (no window selected), you can quickly open a new window to either your home or desktop foler:

Press Command + Up Arrow to open your home directory

Press Command + Down Arrow to open desktop folder

[Editor's note: This will not work if you're navigating a Finder window, as command-up takes on the "up one level" definition at that point.]

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Still the same function
Authored by: _merlin on Sun, Feb 10 2002 at 5:21PM PST

Command-up is still acting as "up one level" when the desktop has the focus. Remember that the desktop is a subfolder of your home directory under OS X. So up one level takes you to your home directory.

Command-down is also maintaining its normal behaviour. If you have the focus on the desktop, but have not selected any icons, the desktop folder itself is selected. So command-down opens it.

Doh!
Authored by: robg on Sun, Feb 10 2002 at 8:10PM PST

Hmm, hadn't thought about it that way. I forgot that the Desktop folder was sitting in the Home folder!

-rob.

Doh!
Authored by: 128K Mac on Mon, Feb 11 2002 at 3:15AM PST

For those of us who are slow witted and live in a world of (sometimes) cluttered desktops, nothing beats command down (in the Finder) when lots of windows are open and a file or folder manages to get "lost."

(Oh, you never "hid" a file under a hard drive icon?)

I like to think of command down as a special cleanup command for dummies when the real "cleanup" just rearranges the clutter.

Isn't that why they invented the idea of a GUI, something called the "desktop metaphor," in 1984? ;-)

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