{"id":35858,"date":"2026-05-01T07:47:28","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T14:47:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/?p=35858"},"modified":"2026-05-01T07:50:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T14:50:13","slug":"get-info","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/get-info\/","title":{"rendered":"Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Get Info"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most of you probably know that if you want to know more about a file in macOS, you can select the file and from the menu bar select File \u2192 Get Info. If you\u2019re a keyboard shortcut person, \u2318I opens the Get Info window. Well, actually, \u2318I opens Get Info whether you\u2019re a keyboard junkie or not.<\/p>\n

I thought it would be instructive to do a deep dive into this powerful window to learn all that it can do. I\u2019ve covered some of this in Tiny Mac Tips 7<\/a>, but for completeness sake, I\u2019ll repeat those parts so we have it all in a nice little package.<\/p>\n

Tags<\/h2>\n

I\u2019m not a huge user of tags in macOS, but I do use them for one specific use case. When I have a big stack of images to insert into a blog post, like the glorious astrophotography images taken by Brian Hoffman<\/a>, I tag them with a keystroke just to put a little color bubble next to them so I can keep track of which ones I\u2019ve inserted. When I think I’m done, I double-check to make sure no images are unintentionally left behind.<\/p>\n

I do this right in the Finder with a keystroke with the file selected. If you use \u23031 – \u23037 (control 1-7), you can add your first favorite 7 tags. By default, these are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and gray. \u23030 clears all tags. If you want to modify your favorite tags, open Finder Settings and select the Tags tab, where you can manage your tags.<\/p>\n

\"Tags
So Colorful … Except for Gray<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That\u2019s swell, but you can also add tags right from the top of the Get Info window. It will say Add Tags\u2026 and you can create or select tags to add right from there.<\/p>\n

\"Security
Just As Colorful in Get Info<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Apple has a really good support document all about how to Use tags to organise files on Mac<\/a> so it\u2019s not all just about the pretty colors.<\/p>\n

General<\/h2>\n

The General section of Get Info is probably the most utilitarian and useful part of the window. You can determine the kind of file you\u2019re querying, the size of the file, where the file is stored, when it was created, and modified.<\/p>\n

But you can actually change the behavior of the file. Let\u2019s say you have a document you create every week, where you enter the same kind of information tailored to the new file. Maybe you take notes in the same meeting every week, and the agenda has the same basic sections, and you like the date at the top. You can create a template file with all of the sections, and then in Get Info, check the box under General that says \u201cStationery Pad\u201d. Now when you open this template, or shall I say Stationery pad, instead of writing over the original, it creates a copy of the file. No need to remember to try to do a Save As.<\/p>\n

\"Get
Let’s Make Stationery!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

You can also lock the file, which means it\u2019s not possible to type in it at all. I\u2019m not quite sure what problem that solves, but it must have been put in there as an option for some reason.<\/p>\n

Next to General (and every section in Get Info), you\u2019ll see a downward chevron. A tap, and it folds up out of the way. Keep in mind that any sections you hide with the chevrons will be hidden the next time you open Get Info on any file. General is probably one you want to keep revealed.<\/p>\n

More Info<\/h2>\n

Some sections are filled with interesting info and actions, and some really could have been combined with other sections. More info only has one thing in it: Last opened. Couldn’t that have been with the Created and Modified times under General? Well, at least you can fold it up out of the way.<\/p>\n

Name & Extension<\/h2>\n

In the “boy, this is obscure” and “why would I ever need to do this” category, we have a name extension. You can see the full name of the file with its extension, and you can edit that. I don’t know why you’d want to open up Get Info to do it when you can do it right from Finder, but okay.<\/p>\n

The weird one is the checkbox that says “Hide extension”, intended to allow you to manually hide the file extension for the single file you have selected in Finder. You may be as confused as I was when checking this box because it may not work.<\/p>\n

You see, in Finder Settings, there’s a global control for all files on the Advanced tab. As Apple explains in their support article Show or hide filename extensions on Mac<\/a>, in Finder Settings, if you select \u201cShow all filename extensions,\u201d all extensions are shown, even for files that have \u201cHide extension\u201d selected in Get Info. If you deselect \u201cShow all filename extensions,\u201d then file extensions are shown or hidden based on their individual \u201cHide extension\u201d settings.<\/p>\n

There’s no way I’m ever going to remember how this works. I’m just going to keep file extensions shown and<\/em> keep this section folded up so I don’t confuse my little self.<\/p>\n

Comments<\/h2>\n

The next section allows you to add comments to the file. This seems like a super nifty idea, because these comments will be indexed by Spotlight, helping you to find the file at a later date.<\/p>\n

However, these comments are not in the file itself; they’re in a hidden file called .DS_Store<\/code>. This macOS proprietary file often gets stripped off of the file when moved to another operating system or even synced through cloud services, including Apple’s very own iCloud sync. As Dr. Howard Oakley of Eclectic Light<\/a> explains,<\/p>\n

\n Worse still, as if recognising the error of its ways, Apple duplicated them in an extended attribute (xattr), only that isn\u2019t kept in sync with the other copy. The end result is that Finder Comments are as reliable as loose scraps of paper, and just as easily lost.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think I’ll steer clear from Comments in Get Info and fold that bad boy up.<\/p>\n

Open With<\/h2>\n

My favorite part of the Get Info window is the “Open with” section, which I’ve spoken about before. Let’s use a Markdown file as an example. Since Markdown is plain text, any editor that can open plain text can open Markdown files. In fact, that’s the main selling point for writing in Markdown.<\/p>\n

I really like the text editor Typora from typora.io\/…<\/a> because of its simplicity, combined with showing me rich text as soon as I’ve written something in Markdown. But maybe you like Text Edit. With “Open with:” we can select the same file and tell it to always open in our own preferred text editor. Heck, go wild and tell it to change all .md files in your text editor of choice!<\/p>\n

The best reason to know about this setting is to stop Apple Music from opening MP3 files on your Mac. Change it to QuickTime for heaven’s sake!<\/p>\n

Preview<\/h2>\n

macOS has a built-in feature called Quick Look, which allows you to hit the space bar with any file selected to get a preview of that file. That’s pretty easy, but if you’re already in Get Info doing something else, it’s handy that it also has a Preview section. It will show you text, graphics, PDFs, and even give you a little player button on media files. I think this would be useful to confirm you’re seeing the info for the file you meant to investigate.<\/p>\n

\"Get
Preview is Handy Within Get Info<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sharing & Permissions<\/h2>\n

The final section is extremely powerful, and yet you may rarely need to use it. In Sharing & Permissions, you can change which users on your computer have which permissions to change specific files.<\/p>\n

With a file (or folder) selected for Get Info, you’ll see a little table with two columns: Name and Privilege. The first name will be the user account. Since I’m logged into my normal account, I see “allison (Me)”. The privileges I have for the currently selected file are Read & Write. There’s a dropdown where I can change it to Read only. Since I’m an admin of my own account, changing it doesn’t make much sense.<\/p>\n

The next two names are staff and everyone. Staff represents all local users on your Mac, including admin and non-admin users. Everyone is local users and any network users with access to things like shared folders. By default, these users have read only privileges. If you’d like to know more about these two groups, again I suggest heading over to Eclectic Light and reading Howard’s article entitled: Permissions: the heart of access control | Eclectic Light<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Below the little table, there’s a plus button which allows you to modify permissions for specific users. Let me explain a use case for you. Let’s say you and another user are collaborating on a project using a shared folder. If you own that folder, you have read and write privileges, but the other user, by default, will only be able to see the files and not do anything with them.<\/p>\n

\"Get
Let’s Add Demo User to Permissions<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When I’m working on a ScreenCastsONLINE video, I have a dedicated SCO user, and my split personality needs to share files back and forth. I can create a new folder and give read and write access to the SCO user so we can both play. When you do this at a folder level, you need to make sure you change the privileges of not just the folder, but everything within it.<\/p>\n

Across the bottom, you’ll see a little lock, which when selected, asks for your user account password (or Touch ID). Once you’ve unlocked it, the small circle with 3 dots inside and a downward chevron will allow you to select Apply to Enclosed Items.<\/p>\n

\"Apply
Demo Wants Read & Write Permissions \u2014 SO Demanding<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

You’ll be asked to confirm before taking such a drastic measure, of course, but you know how to push an OK button by now.<\/p>\n

Bottom Line<\/h2>\n

I hope that if you’re new to the Mac, you learned to appreciate the lowly Get Info window. If you’re a seasoned veteran, I hope you got smug satisfaction saying to yourself, “I knew that!” … but maybe one or two small things were new to you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most of you probably know that if you want to know more about a file in macOS, you can select the file and from the menu bar select File \u2192 Get Info. If you\u2019re a keyboard shortcut person, \u2318I opens the Get Info window. Well, actually, \u2318I opens Get Info whether you\u2019re a keyboard junkie […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35864,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[147],"tags":[4892,5458,4797,4515,8164,241],"class_list":["post-35858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-posts","tag-configuration-comments","tag-file-permissions","tag-get-info","tag-preview","tag-stationery","tag-tags"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Security-Bits-Get-Info-showing-7-color-tags-at-the-top-featured-image-1040x520-1.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35858"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35863,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35858\/revisions\/35863"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}