Make Finder open to your Home folder

Your Home folder is the natural centre of your Mac — Documents, Downloads, Desktop, Pictures, and every folder you've made all live inside it. Making Finder open there by default means every new window starts at that hub, so you're never more than one click from wherever you're going. Here's how to set it.

Set Home as the default

1. Click the desktop or any Finder window so Finder is the active app, then choose Finder → Settings from the menu bar.
2. On the General tab, open the New Finder windows show dropdown.
3. Pick the entry with your account name and a house icon — that's your Home folder. The change takes effect right away.

Press Cmd-N and the new window lands in Home. This works identically on macOS 13 Ventura, 14 Sonoma, and 15 Sequoia; the menu is called Settings on newer releases and Preferences on older ones, but the option sits in the same place.

Why Home makes a good default

A default folder earns its keep by being predictable. Home never moves, never reshuffles its contents, and contains the folders you reach for most as direct children. Start there and a two-click path covers almost everything: Home → Documents → the file, or Home → Downloads → the installer you just grabbed.

It also plays well with muscle memory. macOS already gives Home a dedicated shortcut — Shift-Cmd-H jumps any Finder window straight to it. Once new windows open to Home too, that shortcut and your Cmd-N habit point at the same place, so navigation stops being a decision and becomes automatic.

The Terminal one-liner

Prefer the command line, or setting up a fresh Mac? Finder's code for Home is PfHm:

# Open new Finder windows in Home
defaults write com.apple.finder NewWindowTarget -string "PfHm"
killall Finder

# Undo — return to the macOS default (Recents)
defaults delete com.apple.finder NewWindowTarget
killall Finder

killall Finder relaunches Finder so the setting applies immediately — expect a brief flicker as it restarts, with nothing lost. The delete line clears your custom value and restores stock behaviour.

Home, or one of the folders inside it?

Home is the safe default because it contains everything else, but it isn't the only good choice — and it's worth a moment's thought. If nearly all your work lives in one place, pointing straight at that folder saves a click every single time. People who keep every document in Documents often set that as the target instead; people who live out of Downloads point there. The case for Home over any of them is breadth: from Home you're one hop from all of them, so you never guess wrong. The case against is that one extra hop, repeated all day, if you truly only ever open one folder. Try Home first — it suits most people — and only narrow the target if you notice yourself always drilling into the same subfolder.

Whichever you choose, the setting reverses in seconds, so it's worth experimenting for a day rather than agonising up front. Live with Home as your default, pay attention to where your hand actually goes first when a window opens, and adjust only if a clear pattern emerges — always drilling into Documents, say, or always heading to a project folder. Most people find Home strikes the right balance between breadth and directness, and never touch the setting again after the first week.

Put your Home folders in the sidebar too

Opening to Home is even better when the sidebar lists the folders you use most. See how to customize the Finder sidebar on Mac to add Documents, a project folder, or Home itself for one-click access from any window.