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Finder Sidebar lists on OSX Yosemite

Below my Home icon (on my finder sidebar) are three icons .They look like like wheels. They contain various files like documents and pictures. Are they aliases? if i get rid of them, will they still be on my computer as pictures or other files? The wheels look like the wheel on the top bar. I do not remember adding these, i probably did though. i just want to clean up my computer.

Posted on Aug 30, 2020 2:16 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Aug 30, 2020 10:15 PM

These sound like Smart Folders you have created. These can easily be deleted by Control-clicking on the icon and selecting Remove from Sidebar.


When you create a Smart Folder you are setting up a folder to include items defined by certain search criteria .

If for example you create a Smart Folder for images, this will search for and collate all images on your mac to the Smart Folder. But remember it does not move all these images into the folder, the images stay in their original folder locations. So when you click on Remove from Sidebar it does not remove the items included in the search, just removes the Smart Folder icon from the Sidebar. Also before you Remove from Sidebar you can select Show Enclosing Folder, this will show you the location of the Smart Folder, the default location is Users/<Home>/Library/Saved Searches, you may have chosen to save it elsewhere. Show Enclosing Folder will open the location and you can elect to move it to the Trash, again the contents of the Smart Folder will not be deleted from their original locations.

Having done that you can then Control-click and Remove from Sidebar.


4 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Aug 30, 2020 10:15 PM in response to susiescheaffer

These sound like Smart Folders you have created. These can easily be deleted by Control-clicking on the icon and selecting Remove from Sidebar.


When you create a Smart Folder you are setting up a folder to include items defined by certain search criteria .

If for example you create a Smart Folder for images, this will search for and collate all images on your mac to the Smart Folder. But remember it does not move all these images into the folder, the images stay in their original folder locations. So when you click on Remove from Sidebar it does not remove the items included in the search, just removes the Smart Folder icon from the Sidebar. Also before you Remove from Sidebar you can select Show Enclosing Folder, this will show you the location of the Smart Folder, the default location is Users/<Home>/Library/Saved Searches, you may have chosen to save it elsewhere. Show Enclosing Folder will open the location and you can elect to move it to the Trash, again the contents of the Smart Folder will not be deleted from their original locations.

Having done that you can then Control-click and Remove from Sidebar.


Finder Sidebar lists on OSX Yosemite

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