Title Bar Tricks in OS X

drilldownStandard OS X title bars have several hidden features that can be very helpful. If you hold the command key and click the title of a window1 you will get a menu that allows you to drill down through the hierarchy to the root of the filesystem.

However, that’s not the only useful trick you can perform. If you have a document open in an application you can click on the icon in the title bar and, after holding for a brief second until the icon darkens to indicate it has been selected, drag it. This acts as a standard drag/drop but without having to go locate the file in the Finder! For example, you can save a document in TextMate, Excel, or Word and then drag/drop to Mail or Entourage and it will open a new email message with the document already attached.

  1. This works in the Finder, Word, Excel, TextMate, et cetera. Essentially any open window that represents a document on your filesystem.
  1. Oooooooooold! Gotta love the proxy icon though, pretty indispensable.

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