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How can I hide "today" search in the Finder sidebar?

How do you hide files and applications from showing up in the today, yesterday, and past week section of the finder sidebar?


Dave's Answer:

First, the bad news. I don't think you can hide or remove individual entries from a date-based search in the Mac OS X Finder. What you can do, however, is to hide the convenient "Today", "Yesterday" and "Past Week" search shortcuts entirely.

Does that solve the problem?

Well, kinda sorta. It's all I can think of, so perhaps someone else can offer up a solution that lets you edit the search results or hide specific matches from showing up...

Here's a typical Finder window in Mac OS X (I'm running 10.6.4, but it's been pretty much the same for quite a while):

mac finder hide search sidebar 1

I have the search options hidden by simply having the tiny triangle next to it pointing to the right rather than down, but if I click on the little grey triangle adjacent to SEARCH FOR:

mac finder hide search sidebar 2

Now we can see what you're talking about. If you Ctrl-Click on the specific item you want to remove -- if you do -- then you'll find that there's a handy contextual pop-up menu that shows up:

mac finder hide search sidebar 3

Rather than remove this entry, I'm going to choose "Open Sidebar Preferences...", which reveals the following:

mac finder hide search sidebar 4

Now you can see all your options, including the ability to hide "Today", "Yesterday" and "Last Week". That's the best I can offer, I hope it helps you out with your dilemma.


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Categorized: Mac OS X Help   (Article 9497, Written by )
Tagged: finder security, mac finder, mac os x, mac search
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