Hint: Expand open-save dialogs in Mac OS X

You know when you save or open a file in Mac OS X you see a standard dialog box. It’s like a small window and it looks the same in (almost) all applications. The standard behavior in Mac OS X is to show a minimized version (see the “Before” screenshot) of the full version (see the “After” screenshot). At least for myself, if I see that window, I almost always click on the down-arrow to expand it the full version. If you also do that a lot you can set the standard behavior to be that it always shows the full version. For that you have to open the Terminal (Applications>Utilities) and type in the following command:

defaults write -g NSNavPanelExpandedStateForSaveMode -bool TRUE

Then press enter, and from then on the full version should always be shown, saving you a mouse click from time to time. If you would want to go back to the standard setting, just enter the same command in the Terminal, but change “TRUE” to “FALSE”.

by Magnus Nystedt

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