How to Add Shortcuts to Finder: Five Routes That Work

The quickest way to add a shortcut to Finder is to select a folder and press Control+Command+T. The folder appears in the Favorites section of the sidebar in every Finder window and in every Open and Save dialog, and the original stays where it was. That is one of five routes. The others are a toolbar item, an alias placed somewhere convenient, a keyboard shortcut, and a folder in the Dock. They are set up differently and they break for different reasons, so the right one depends on how often the place is used and what has to keep working when folders move. The steps below follow Apple's own Mac User Guide and keyboard shortcut list, both checked on 8 October 2026.

Route one: a row in the sidebar

The sidebar is the column on the left of every Finder window. Apple's guide describes its items as aliases: adding or removing one never moves the original.

There are three ways to add a row, and each fits a different kind of item.

• A folder or a disk: drag it into the Favorites section, or select it and press Control+Command+T.
• A file: hold Command while dragging it into Favorites. Without Command, dropping a file onto a folder row moves the file into that folder.
• An app: hold Command and drag the app icon into Favorites.

To remove a row, drag it out of the sidebar until a remove symbol appears. If the Favorites heading is missing, Apple's guide points to Finder > Settings > Sidebar, where at least one Favorites item must be selected for the section to show.

The sidebar's strength is reach. The same list appears in the file dialogs of other apps, so a folder added once becomes one click away in a word processor's Save dialog. Its weakness is that it is a single flat list. After a year it often holds more rows than anyone can scan quickly, and it has no way to group related folders under one heading.

A good rule is to keep the sidebar to places opened every day or every week. Anything used less often is better reached through one of the routes below, where it does not crowd the list.

Route two: an item in the toolbar

The toolbar across the top of a Finder window can hold folders, files and apps as well as buttons. Apple's guide gives the steps: press and hold Command, drag the item to the toolbar until a green plus sign appears, then release. Rearranging works the same way, Command plus drag. Removing an item is Command plus drag out of the toolbar.

A toolbar item behaves differently from a sidebar row in one useful way. Dropping files onto a toolbar app opens them in that app. A text editor or an image tool in the toolbar becomes a target: select files in the window, drag them up, and they open. A script or an Automator application placed there can act on dropped files in the same way, which is the basis of most "add a button to Finder" tips.

Two limits apply. First, the toolbar is shared across all Finder windows but does not appear in other apps' file dialogs. Second, it is narrow. When a window is too small to show every item, a chevron appears at the right end and the rest are hidden behind it. Two or three items is the practical ceiling.

Apple's guide also notes a side effect worth knowing: hiding the toolbar from the View menu also hides the sidebar. Anyone who removes the toolbar to save space loses both routes at once.

Route three: an alias, or a symbolic link

An alias is a small file that points at another file or folder. Select the original and press Control+Command+A, or hold Option and Command while dragging it to the new location. The alias can then sit on the Desktop, inside a project folder, or anywhere else it is useful. Pressing Command+R with an alias selected reveals the original.

Aliases are what most people mean by a "desktop shortcut" on the Mac, and they survive more than people expect. An alias keeps working when the original is renamed or moved on the same disk. It stops working when the original is deleted or replaced with a copy.

A symbolic link is the command-line counterpart, created in Terminal:

ln -s ~/Documents/Clients/Current ~/Desktop/Current

The two look identical in a Finder window and behave differently everywhere else.

	Alias	Symbolic link
Created with	Control+Command+A, or Option and Command drag	ln -s in Terminal
Survives a rename or move of the original	Yes, on the same disk	No, it stores a path
Followed by Terminal and scripts	No, treated as a plain file	Yes
Followed by most developer tools	Rarely	Yes

The deciding question is who will follow the shortcut. If only Finder and the person clicking it will use it, an alias is the sturdier choice. If a script, a build tool or an AI agent running in a terminal needs to go through it, only a symbolic link works, because cd into an alias fails.

Route four: a keyboard shortcut

Finder already has keyboard shortcuts for the most common places. From Apple's keyboard shortcut list:

Keys	Opens
Shift+Command+D	Desktop
Shift+Command+H	Home folder
Shift+Command+O	Documents
Option+Command+L	Downloads
Shift+Command+U	Utilities
Shift+Command+F	Recents
Shift+Command+G	Go to Folder

Go to Folder is the most flexible of these. Press Shift+Command+G, type a path such as ~/Documents/Clients/Current, and press Return. The field completes names with Tab and remembers recent entries, so a place used yesterday is usually a couple of keystrokes away. It also opens hidden locations such as ~/Library without changing any display setting.

For a single folder that deserves its own key, the Shortcuts app is the usual route. Build a shortcut whose only action opens that folder, then assign a keyboard shortcut to it in the shortcut's details. Keep the key combination away from ones apps already use: combinations with Control and Option together collide less often than Command plus a single letter.

Keyboard routes have the lowest maintenance of all five. Nothing is added to a list, nothing can drift out of date, and Go to Folder works for any place without any setup.

Route five: a folder in the Dock

Any folder can live in the Dock. Drag it to the right-hand side of the Dock, near the Trash, past the divider that separates apps from documents. Control-click the folder in the Dock to choose whether it displays as a folder icon or as a stack of its contents, and whether the contents open as a fan, a grid or a list.

The Downloads folder already sits there by default, and the same treatment suits any folder whose contents change daily: an inbox for scans, an export folder from a design app, a shared drop folder. The Dock is visible from any app, so the folder can be opened without bringing a Finder window forward first.

The Dock is also a place where shortcuts accumulate quietly. Each folder added there competes for space with apps, and on a smaller screen the icons shrink quickly. One or two folders is where the Dock route works best.

When a shortcut stops working

Each route fails in its own way, and the symptom points to the cause.

A sidebar row opens nothing, or shows a question mark. The original was deleted, or replaced by a copy with the same name. Sidebar rows follow a folder that is renamed or moved on the same disk, but a copy is a different folder as far as the system is concerned. Remove the row and add the folder again from where it now lives.

An alias asks to be fixed. When the original is gone, opening an alias brings up a dialog offering to fix it by choosing a new original. Choosing the folder's new location repairs the alias in place, which is quicker than making a new one when the alias is referenced from several places.

A symbolic link shows a generic icon and opens nothing. The path it stores no longer exists. In Terminal, ls -l on the link shows the stored path after an arrow, which makes the broken part obvious. Recreate it with ln -sf pointing at the new location.

A shortcut to an external drive or a network share does nothing. The volume is not mounted. Aliases can ask Finder to reconnect a network share, but an unplugged drive cannot be reached by any route until it is connected again.

A custom keyboard shortcut stopped firing. Another app has often claimed the same combination. Testing the key with Finder in front, then with the usual app in front, shows whether a conflict is the cause; moving to a less common combination resolves it.

A short monthly check of the sidebar and the Dock, removing anything that no longer opens, keeps these failures from piling up.

Choosing between the five

The routes overlap, so the choice comes down to how often a place is used and who needs to reach it.

Use	Best route
Opened every day, also needed in Save dialogs	Sidebar row
A tool that should accept dropped files	Toolbar item
A shortcut on the Desktop or inside another folder	Alias
A path that scripts or a terminal must follow	Symbolic link
A known place, reached without the mouse	Built-in shortcut or Go to Folder
A folder whose contents change daily	Dock stack

Using two or three routes together is normal. A typical setup has five or six sidebar rows for current projects, Go to Folder for everything else, and one Dock stack for incoming files.

The point where all five run out is grouping. None of them can put three folders from three different disks under one name and keep them together. A project with footage on an external drive, a brief in Documents and assets on a NAS ends up as three sidebar rows, or as a folder full of aliases that a terminal cannot follow.

File managers built as Finder replacements address that gap. Some treat the sidebar as a map rather than a list: headings named by meaning, folders from different disks hung under one project, labels that differ from folder names, all without moving a file. Some also tie a terminal to the folder on screen and offer a command palette that reaches every place from the keyboard. The features page lists what that looks like in practice, and the comparison page sets out how such a tool sits next to the apps already in use.

What to change first

Press Control+Command+T on the three folders opened most often this week, and learn Shift+Command+G for everything else. If the real need is grouping folders from different disks into one project, try that in the sidebar of Atriens, which is free on the Mac.