Software Review: Default Folder X

As my previous post was about using tags to organize your documents, I would like to take a closer look at one of the tools we could use to do this: Default Folder X by St. Clair Software, which provides a smart extension to the basic features of Mac OS X. And it’s much more then just a tagging tool.

Default folder X is a utility which integrates with the system nicely. After installing it, it will show up as a preference pane in your System Preferences. Each ‘Open’ or ‘Save’ window is accompanied by the Default Folder X panels. To the right of the window you see the panel with navigation options, and at the bottom of the window you see the panel with a field for spotlight comments. There is even a handy comment history to recycle often used comments, or tags, like I prefer to call them.

By clicking on the Default Folder X logo in the right panel, you can actually set a default folder for the application you’re in. Did you ever have to save a lot of files in a row, and have to navigate to the same folder over and over again? Well, that’s taken care of now by Default Folder X. This menu also lets you rename folders, move them to the trash or create .zip files.

The little iMac icon gives easy access to the folder structure on you hard disk, the heart icon lets you create a list of favorite locations on your computer, the clock gives you a list of recently used locations and the finder icon shows a list of open finder windows. Open finder windows can also be detected by just moving your mouse over the screen. Default Folder X will display a grey box with the name of the window in it, even if they are hidden behind other open windows. This functionality is called ‘Finder click’, and it can be disabled if you prefer.

The user interface feels very smooth and fast, and it’s easy to use. As you can see in the picture below al the menu items have their own key commands too, which makes using it even faster. The layout can be changed in the Settings. By default you get the ‘Black bezel’, which puts a bezel around the window containing the panels. ‘Black toolbar’ is the one I used in the screenshots, I like it better because it’s a bit more elegant. ‘Grey sidebar’ makes it look a bit oldschool and is nice if you don’t like the black and want it to have the same color scheme as your Finder windows.

When you’re opening a file, the ‘Open’ window will accompanied by the same side panel and a slightly different panel at the bottom of the window. Now you can not only add comments for Spotlight, you can also view information about the document you’re opening, view and adjust permissions, and there’s a Preview button, which enables you to preview the document you’re opening, which is great when you are browsing through a set of photo’s. You can resize the window to adjust the size of the preview.

One thing that disappoints me: it doesn’t preview sound files. As I’m working with sound a lot it would be great to be able to preview a sound before I open it in any application. I hope this will be added in a future version of Default Folder X.

The Preferences can be accessed from the Default Folder X logo. Here you can adjust and add default folder for each application on you computer, set favorite folders and add ‘Hotkeys’ to them so you can acces them by just pressing a key. In the Settings you can adjust the behaviour, the layout and enable and disable certain functions like the ‘Finder click’ mentioned earlier. It’s also possible to exclude certain applications from using Default Folder X’s functionlality if you want to.

So, do we all need it?

Default Folder X is a unique utility that adds a bit of extra functionality to the already great interface of Mac OS X. What I really like about it is the way it streamlines and integrates with my workflow. Great pieces of software like Quicksilver do this too. You have to get to know it for a while, but once you do you’re using it all the time and you’re not even aware of it.

Is there an alternative? To gain fast access to a specific folder while saving and opening documents you could make a shortcut to this folder in the left section of your Finder window. However, if you start doing more projects this list will grow, and you have to manage it manually. And Default Folder X doesn’t get in your way. Even if you don’t use it every time you open or save a document, it probably won’t annoy you at all.

If you’re one of the few brave ones who decide to give up their folder structure and start using tags and Spotlight to find your stuff, you might find Default Folder X particularly interesting because it gives you a tool to add those tags in the form of Spotlight comments everytime you save a document.

Default Folder X can be found on St. Clair Software’s website. There is a demo available which is fully functional for 30 days. A licence costs $34,95, or €26.95.

Photo by Iansakit

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