I’m posting this here because this is such a wonderful and knowledgable community.
On my Mac when I plug in a drive or connect to a server an icon shows up on the desktop. Now I often have a number of things open (e.g. Xojo). I end up having to hide/close/move apps and windows to find the thing I just connected.
What I would like is for the recently connected item to show up in the Dock (or in a folder in the Dock). As far as I know this not something the Finder does.
My question: Is there some little piece of software that does that? If not, I’ll have to call Apple.
I don’t know about the Dock, but those things you describe show up in the Finder sidebar for me, which is far easier to get to than the Desktop. I believe you can control that in the Finder settings for Sidebar.
I activated “hot corners” (might be a different name in English) for my desktop. IIRC it’s a setting for desktop in the Settings app.
Moving the mouse in one corner hides all apps to show the desktop.
Moving in another corner locks the screen which is really useful in my work environment (coworking space) where I often want to lock my screen when moving away from my desk.
If you’re like a lot of people, you probably have your Finder settings for New Finder Windows show:
Instead of changing that, you can create a shortcut in macOS Shortcuts that opens a new finder window that shows all your hard drives instead of your home folder. You can add that shortcut to the Dock right-clicking and selecting “Add to Dock”
Of course, there’s also writing your own menubar app that uses a timer to see when new drives are attached to your Mac, and gives you a notification that you can click on to open a window showing the directory for that drive.
Also, F11 usually hides all your windows to reveal the desktop (press F11 again to restore them). According to your settings, it may be fn-F11 instead.
I am not sure I understand what you’ask, but here’s what I do (I cannot see my Desktop: too many open windows…):
a. There is a Windows Menu: I can activate the one I need,
b. Xojo application icon can be added to the Dock (drag and drop it in the Dock, where you want to see it; you can move it to the left-Right later);
c. In the AppleMenu, there is a Recent Items (or similar name): you can access one of the last 10, 20 or change the settings for more; Applications / Documents.
d. In the Go Menu, there is a MenItem named Desktop: it opens a window named Desktop with all icons you have in the Desktop (Shift-Cmd-D).
The first time you plug in the drive, drag it to the section of the Dock next to the Trash. It will persist there even after you eject it, and once you plug it in again, you can use the Dock icon to access it.
In the Finder Settings, you can modify a property (General, first icon on the left).
You can also use cmd-shift-D to display the icons Network, Boot disk and any other mounted har disk / Memory Stick, etc.
The shortcut comes from a MenuItem in the Go Menu.
This basically solves the problem. What I ended up doing:
Created a folder (Devices), and put it in a Dock Items folder I have in Documents.
Dragged Devices folder to Dock.
Inserted a couple of flash drives, and dragged their icons to the Devices folder in the Dock. It’s set as Display as Stack, View as List.
Ejected flash drives; the icons (Aliases) remained.
When I put flash drive back in, I can now access it from the Devices folder in the Dock.
This is going to sound vague, but there is something in macOS that may take the aliases away at some point. I used to do a similar thing with driver shares from the network, placing them in the Finder sidebar, you could click them and it would mount the share etc.
Occasionally, I would find that the alias I created had been deleted completely. I never really noticed what it was that caused them to disappear. Perhaps a system update or even a macOS reboot when the network wasn’t corrected. There felt like there was a process that checked aliases and removed ones that were no longer valid. I wish I could be more helpful than that.
I always drag Applications to the dock, it’s a super fast way of getting to an app without putting everything in the dock. Personally I set it to show as icon and display as grid.
Ian, there’s a trick I’ve been using for years for this too.
I put the Applications and Utilities folders in the dock, but by visual/lizard brain is confused by how they appear - the first app icon shows, making it look like another app in the dock.
If you create an empty folder in the Applications folder call it AppFolder and add a space to the front of it’s name, then it sorts to the top of the folder contents and appears like this in the dock:
With the enclosed app icons behind a folder icon. ( I think I copy-pasted the real Applications folder’s icon as well)
