Expert’s Rating
Our Verdict
Mac OS X ’s Apple menu provide useful hierarchal lists of recently used applications , documents , and servers ( the issue of each influence by your configurations in the Appearance pane of System Preferences ) . Similarly , the File menu of many programme includes an Open Recent submenu , letting you quickly open documents you of late used in the program . But in my experience , the distinctive Mac drug user does n’t take advantage of these features — most likely because these menus are tucked away , effectively out of mint .
wry Software’sFreshaims to make late documents and folder more approachable and to let you do more with them . change over to Fresh at any prison term — by clicking its Dock icon , using OS X ’s Command+Tab applications programme switcher , or pressing a keyboard shortcut you set — and two large , light-green bars , which clean callszones , look on the screen . The vivacious - green zone , on top , is called the Fresh Files geographical zone and shows all new and recently used items : document you ’ve just edited , files you ’ve just download , folders you ’ve just created — if OS X ’s Spotlight index thinks a file is new or newly modified , it seem in unused , newer item to the left field . ( There ’s also a setting to let in item that have been recently accessed or open . )
bracing displays a large variation of each detail ’s Finder icon , along with the detail ’s name and its alteration date and fourth dimension . To open an item , you simply twice - click it . But unlike with OS X ’s built - in Recent Items feature , Fresh lets you perform other actions , as well . For starters , if you hold the cursor over an item ’s name in Fresh , the programme will expose the full track to that item . And you may sweep up an item from the Fresh Files zone much as you might drag it in the Finder — for example , to another folder to move it , to another volume to re-create it , or to an vitamin E - chain armour subject matter to send it as an adherence .
Right - penetrate ( or control condition - click ) on an item in Fresh and the leave menu lets you pick out from a telephone number of other options : launch the detail in a dissimilar program than its default option ; rename the item ; chop-chop switch to any booklet in the itinerary to the point ; unveil the item in the Finder ; get more information about the item ( using the Finder ’s Get Info window ) ; or move the item to the Trash .
There are also a number of sassy - specific action you may perform using the same menu . peculiarly useful are command to never show the selected item in Fresh , or to never show item in a particular leaflet in the current detail ’s path . When you first jump using Fresh , you ’ll find yourself using these options quite a fleck , as by default Fresh displays your eastward - postal service database , music Indian file you act in iTunes , and other frequently used , but behind - the - scenes point . For example , the first prison term an MP3 data file showed up in Fresh , I aright - clicked it and choose Never Show Items In - > iTunes Music to forbid other iTunes - managed audio files from appearing in the futurity . ( refreshful ’s Preferences windowpane also lets you obstruct specific files and paths , as well as filing cabinet with finical file cabinet annexe . )
Fresh also lets you tot and edit file tags , anunofficial additionto OS X ’s file metadata . you could use this characteristic to assign one or more keywords to an detail , and then expend Spotlight — both from within Fresh and in the Finder — to bump all items with a exceptional tatter .
Fresh ’s other zone , the aqua - unripened one on the bottom , is call The Cooler , and it ’s an area for you tomanuallyplace particular you want to keep ready to hand , much like the honest-to-god Gem Xshelf . hang back an item — for example , a folder or a document — into The Cooler , and it remain there until you by choice remove it . you could perform the same action on Cooler - host item as you could on item in the Fresh Files zone , although you could also manually reorder items in The Cooler . you’re able to even drag a single file from the Fresh Files zona to The Cooler to ensure the item is well accessible , say , tomorrow . The Cooler adds quite a bit of utility to Fresh , make the platform more than just “ recent files”—I’ve been using The Cooler as an option to a Work In Progress pamphlet in the Dock .
The number of items you may look at in either zone depends on your screen door size , although each zone in reality holds more than that number . you could reach the additional items using the arrow headstone .
As utile as Fresh is , there are a few options I ’d like to see impart . For example , I wish I could use the keyboard to chose a data file and execute any action on it ; sometimes you ca n’t use the arrow Francis Scott Key to select a single file until you ’ve first clicked somewhere within a zone , and you must practice the cursor to access any of the useful options in Fresh ’s contextual menu . I ’d also like to be capable to incapacitate Fresh ’s Dock icon , and to keep Fresh visible until you dismiss it — sometimes I require to do multiple actions on an item , or drag multiple detail out of Fresh .
Despite these quibbles , I found Fresh to be amazingly utilitarian . I calculate myself among those who rarely utilize OS X ’s Recent Items feature , but Fresh found its way into my workflow — and it might just stay there .
