The Get Info screen

Wiley

By Mark L. Chambers from "Mac OS X Lion All-in-One For Dummies"

The Mac OS X Finder’s Info dialog is the place to view the specifics on any highlighted item (including drives and aliases). Select an item and press the Apple command key+I, click the Action toolbar button and then select Get Info from the menu, right-click on the item and select Get Info, or choose the Finder’s File menu and then choose Get Info. The results look like this:

If you select more than one item (up to ten items), Lion opens a separate Info dialog for each item.

You can also show an Info dialog that summarizes multiple items — this is A Good Thing if you need to see the total size for several files or folders. To display the Summary Info dialog, select the desired items, hold down the Control key and click File—>Get Summary Info. (Yep, some of the items on the File menu change when you hold down Control. Display the File menu and try it yourself!)

Mac OS X displays the General information panel when you first open the Info dialog, but other panels are usually available (depending on the type of selected items).

For most types of files and folders, the Info dialog can tell you

  • Kind: What type of item it is — for example, whether it’s a file, folder, drive, or alias
  • Open with: What program launches automatically when you open the selected item
  • Size: The total size of the item (or items, if there are more than ten) that you select
  • Where: The actual path on your hard drive where the item is located
  • Dates: The date when the item was created and was last modified
  • Version: The application version number
  • Name & Extension: The file’s name and extension
  • Sharing & Permissions: The privileges that control who can do what to the file and whether a file is locked in read-only mode

Some of this information you can change, and some can only be displayed. To banish the Info dialog from your Desktop, click the dialog’s Close button.

You can hide or display various parts of the Info dialog by clicking the triangles next to each section heading.