A secret weapon in the Finder arsenal is the Go > Go to Folder feature. Choose that menu item (or type Command-Shift-G) and you can leap around the macOS filesystem without having to navigate folders. This is frequently useful when you’re working with low-level settings files or items hidden away in the user or system Library folder.
Apple made a significant change between macOS 11 Big Sur and 12 Monterey in how it helps you find folders: Monterey offers a squishier set of matching options, making it more likely you’ll find a folder that you don’t know the precise name of, or if you type fewer characters to make a match.
In Big Sur, start to type a path and macOS will offer only auto-fill suggestions. In Monterey, however, it offers exact matches, but also fuzzier ones. Type in ~/.ss, and macOS suggests Users > gif > .ssh, the path to the .ssh folder in my user folder. But it also matches .dvdcss, which has two s’s in a row, and then suggests even looser potentials, like .zsh_history and .keybase-installer. As you go down the list, matches become even more tangentially related to what you typed.
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Author: Glenn Fleishman, Senior Contributor
Glenn Fleishman’s most recent books include Take Control of iOS and iPadOS Privacy and Security, Take Control of Calendar and Reminders, and Take Control of Securing Your Mac. In his spare time, he writes about printing and type history. He’s a senior contributor to Macworld, where he writes Mac 911.