Show the path bar and status bar in Finder

Finder's window title tells you the name of the current folder — but not where it actually lives. The path bar fixes that by showing the full breadcrumb trail from your disk root to the current folder, permanently visible at the bottom of the window. It's one of the first things worth turning on when you set up a Mac.

What the path bar shows

The path bar runs along the bottom of every Finder window when enabled. It shows the folder hierarchy as a row of breadcrumbs — for example: Macintosh HD › Users › yourname › Documents › Projects. Each segment is clickable, so you can jump up the tree without pressing the Back button repeatedly. It also shows where a file lives even when you've reached it through a search or a smart folder.

Turn on the path bar

There are two equally fast ways to do it:

Menu: In Finder, choose View › Show Path Bar. The keyboard shortcut is ⌥⌘P (Option + Command + P). Toggle it again to hide it.

Terminal: If you want to set this permanently and have it survive a Finder restart:

# show the path bar at the bottom of every Finder window
defaults write com.apple.finder ShowPathbar -bool true
killall Finder

To hide it again:

# hide the path bar (restore default)
defaults write com.apple.finder ShowPathbar -bool false
killall Finder

Copy a path from the path bar

The path bar isn't just decorative — you can interact with it. Right-click any segment in the breadcrumb trail and you'll see two useful options:

• Open in New Tab — jumps to that folder in a new Finder tab
• Copy "[Folder Name]" as Pathname — copies the full POSIX path (like /Users/yourname/Documents/Projects) to your clipboard

That copy-as-pathname trick is particularly handy when you need to paste a file path into Terminal, a script, or a dialog box. It saves you from typing out a long path manually.

The status bar: item count and disk space

While you're at it, turn on the status bar too. It sits below the path bar (or at the very bottom of the window if you don't have the path bar enabled) and shows two pieces of information: how many items are in the current folder, and how much free space remains on the disk.

Menu: Choose View › Show Status Bar. The keyboard shortcut is ⌘/ (Command + forward slash).

Terminal:

# show the status bar (item count + disk space)
defaults write com.apple.finder ShowStatusBar -bool true
killall Finder

To hide it:

# hide the status bar
defaults write com.apple.finder ShowStatusBar -bool false
killall Finder

When you select files, the status bar updates to show the total size of your selection — which is far faster than pressing ⌘I on a group of files to see their combined size.

Also worth enabling: the full path in the title bar

The window title bar can also show the full folder path instead of just the folder name. This requires a Terminal command with no menu equivalent:

# show full folder path in the Finder title bar
defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool true
killall Finder

This gives you the complete path right in the window title — useful when you have multiple Finder windows open and need to tell them apart at a glance. Undo with:

defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool false
killall Finder

Between the path bar, the status bar, and the full-path title bar, you'll always know exactly where you are and what you're looking at. Three small settings that should be defaults, but aren't.