OS X Mountain Lion Bible

Using the Finder's Menus

Like any application, the Finder has a set of menus, with menu options specific to the Finder's operations. The Finder's menu options appear on the menu bar—to the right of the symbol—when the Finder is the active application; click the desktop or the Finder icon in the Dock to make Finder the active application. Let's look at the Finder-specific menus. (Menu options such as About, Preferences, Services, Hide, Show, Cut, Copy, Paste, Minimize, Zoom, Bring All to Front, and Help that are universal to all applications are covered in Chapter 2.)

The Finder menu

The application menu for the Finder is, not surprisingly, called the Finder menu.

• Empty Trash: The Trash's trash can icon is located on the far right of the Dock and contains files and folders you've deleted from the Mac. These files stay in the Trash (so they can be recovered) until you choose this menu option. Emptying the Trash permanently removes these items from the Mac. You also can press Shift++Delete to empty the Trash.

• Secure Empty Trash: The Secure Empty Trash option not only empties the Trash but also completely overwrites the files with meaningless data, preventing anybody from recovering the data even with an undelete or recovery utility.

The File menu

The File menu offers the following ...