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Comment by tobyhinloopen | Hacker News Reader

The new-menu is the one feature from Windows I wish was present in macOS. Especially for text files. When I’m in a folder, many times I want to open the current folder in some kind of app (terminal, code editor) or I want to create a new text file

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Just drag-and-drop, you can pick up the current folder in Finder bij dragging it from the titlebar (with a slight delay, else you move the window) and dragging it to any application in the Dock you like (even the Terminal, which will cd into that folder).

The other way around, if you are in a terminal, use the command open[0] to open the current folder in Finder, or a file in the corresponding application.

[0] https://www.unix.com/man-page/osx/1/open/

Yea I love this ability to drag and drop stuff. Combined with “open .” as you mention, it does nearly make up for the lack of a new file context menu!

Create a folder somewhere. Call it "New documents" or something.

Create blank text file(s) of the type you want within that folder. For example, I have a blank.txt which opens in TextMate, a blank.rb which opens in TextMate, and a blank.rtf which opens in TextEdit.

Lock the folder (by selecting it, Cmd-I, check "Locked").

Put the folder in your Dock.

Hey presto. You can now create a blank text file anywhere simply by dragging it out of this folder in the Dock. Because the folder is locked, you won't delete the original - macOS will make a copy for you, every time. Just rename it before opening and you're done.

Neat trick

The replies to this thread highlight how there are two different camps of computer user.

One camp, full of very able computer users, responds immediately with techniques and suggestions for how to do something, because (1) that's what they'd want to hear, and (2) they're generous with their advice.

The second camp says "Why shouldn't the UI do what my intuition clearly craves? I'm not interested in learning alternate ways to bend my mind just to do something that Apple could have provided with minimal effort."

I’ve seen this happen on HN quite often.

Guy 1: I wish I could do X

Guy 2: You can do it with a little trouble by doing Y

Guy 3: Why should we have to do Y?

Sometimes Guy 3 is also Guy 1. It’s an interesting phenomenon, for sure.

I have a script that changes the Terminal to the directory of the frontmost Finder window. Then I use touch to create empty new files.

The script, for whoever's curious: https://gitlab.com/jcfields/shell-scripts/-/blob/master/cdf

Back when I used Windows, I actually used the New > Text Document item discussed in the article all the time. It created an empty, 0-byte file, so I'd rename it to whatever file extension I needed. There was a folder that contained the templates for this menu so you could add or remove blank files for any type, but I only ever used the .txt file one.

Was just about to comment the exact same thing before I read this.

So much, so much yes.

Occasionally I do right click and go for the 'New' menu to find it isn't there even though macOS has been my primary OS for about 15 years.

There are HUNDREDS (not an exaggeration) of Mac OS shortcuts out there.

Take a look at this video. This guy is awesome. Check out his other Mac OS tips videos as well and you are very likely to find what you are looking for and then some.

Edit: forgot to paste the link. Here it is: https://youtu.be/HPQobUOx17o

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