How to Customize the Finder Toolbar on Mac

Every Finder window carries the same strip of buttons across the top, and most people never touch it. That strip is fully editable: you can rearrange the built-in controls, throw out the ones you never click, and pin your own apps and folders next to them. Here is how to make the toolbar earn its space.

Rearrange the built-in buttons

Finder ships with a conservative toolbar — back and forward arrows, view switcher, share, tags, search. The full catalogue is bigger: there are buttons for New Folder, Delete, Get Info, Quick Look, Eject, Connect, Path, and AirDrop, among others.

1. Open any Finder window and choose View → Customize Toolbar… You can also Control-click (right-click) an empty part of the toolbar and pick Customize Toolbar… from the shortcut menu.
2. A sheet drops down showing every available control. Drag any item from the sheet into the toolbar to add it, and drag items out of the toolbar to remove them — they vanish in a puff.
3. While the sheet is open, drag buttons left or right to reorder them. Add a Space or Flexible Space item if you want to group related buttons.
4. Click Done. The change applies to every Finder window.

The Path button is a sleeper hit: it shows the folder hierarchy above your current location, so you can jump three levels up in one click. If you prefer something always visible, the path bar does the same job — see the tip at the end.

Add apps, folders, and files with Cmd+drag

You are not limited to Apple's buttons. Any item on your Mac can live in the toolbar:

1. Find the app, folder, or file you want — for example, an app in /Applications or a project folder.
2. Hold Cmd and drag it onto the toolbar. Wait a beat until the other buttons shuffle aside, then drop it.

A toolbar app opens with one click, and it doubles as a drop target: drag a file onto a toolbar app to open the file with that app. A toolbar folder works the same way — click to open it, or drop files on it to move them there. This is the closest thing Finder has to a built-in launcher, and unlike the Dock it is always exactly where your files are.

To remove a custom item later, hold Cmd and drag it off the toolbar — no need to open the customizer sheet.

Reset the defaults or bring back a hidden toolbar

If your toolbar has turned into a junk drawer, open View → Customize Toolbar… and drag the default set (the row shown at the bottom of the sheet) up into the toolbar. That wipes your customizations and restores Apple's stock layout in one move.

If the toolbar has disappeared entirely, you almost certainly toggled it off by accident: the keyboard shortcut Option+Cmd+T hides and shows it, and it sits one slot away from the new-tab shortcut. Choose View → Show Toolbar (or press Option+Cmd+T again) to bring it back. Note that hiding the toolbar also hides the sidebar and collapses tabs — that is normal behavior on Ventura, Sonoma, and Sequoia, not a bug.

One more tip: keep the path in sight

The toolbar's Path button is useful, but a permanent path bar is better for heavy file work. Press Option+Cmd+P or choose View → Show Path Bar, and read our guide to the Finder path bar for the tricks it unlocks — like double-clicking any ancestor folder to jump straight to it.