How to Organize Sidebar Favorites Into Sections on a Mac

Favorites starts with Desktop, Documents and Downloads. A year later it holds a folder for every client, the photo albums you are sorting, two projects and a shared folder, all in one list you scan from top to bottom each time.

The Finder can't group your favorites into sections of your own. Its sidebar has fixed sections (Favorites, iCloud, Locations, Tags), and Finder Settings only lets you choose which items appear in them. You can add, reorder, remove and fold, but you can't put a "Clients" section next to a "Photos" one. Folia Files can: its left sidebar keeps a Favorites section like the Finder's, brings over your Finder favorites, and lets you add sections of your own under it, fold them, rename them and reorder them, with the Trash and AirDrop in the same sidebar.

What the Finder sidebar lets you do

Add a folder

Drag a folder into the Favorites section of the sidebar, or select it and choose File › Add to Sidebar (⌃⌘T).

Choose what it shows

Choose Finder › Settings…, then the Sidebar tab. Under "Show these items in the sidebar", tick or untick the items macOS knows about: Recents, AirDrop, Applications, Desktop, Documents, Downloads, your home folder, iCloud Drive, disks, connected servers and a few more.

Reorder, remove and fold

Drag a favorite up or down to change its place. Right-click one and choose Remove from Sidebar to take it out (the folder itself stays where it is). Point at a section's title, such as Locations, and click the arrow that appears to fold it.

What it can't do

There is no option to create a section of your own or to rename one, so everything you add lands in the same Favorites list. A common workaround is a folder of aliases: make a "Clients" folder, fill it with aliases to each client's folder, and put that one folder in the sidebar. It works, but it's a folder, not a group: one more click every time, and the sidebar doesn't show what's inside.

Sections of favorites in Folia Files

Start from your Finder favorites

You don't have to build the list again. In Settings › General, next to Finder settings, click Bring Over from the Finder…, then Use These Settings. Your Finder favorites go to the top of Favorites, in the Finder's order, and the ones Folia Files already had stay after them. The same card offers the Finder's default view and its hidden-files and extensions settings; Undo puts everything back, and the Finder itself stays as it is. If macOS keeps the Finder's favorites out of reach, the card says so: reading them needs Full Disk Access. The welcome tour offers the same step.

Create a section

1. Show the left sidebar if it is hidden: View › Show/Hide Sidebar (⌃⌘S).
2. Point at the Favorites title: a + and a gear appear. Click +, or right-click the title and choose New Section….
3. Type a name, such as Clients, and click Create.

The new section appears right under Favorites, its name in smaller type with a thin line after it. Make as many as you need.

Fill it with folders

• Drag a folder from a pane onto the section's title, or between two of its favorites. Aim between the rows: a folder dropped onto a favorite goes into that folder, as when you drop it on any folder.
• Move a favorite you already have: drag it from Favorites into the section, or right-click it and choose Move to Section, then the section. New Section… at the bottom of that submenu creates a section with that favorite already in it.
• Add the folder you are in: File › Add to Favorites (⌃⌘T, the same shortcut as the Finder's Add to Sidebar) adds the selected folder, or the pane's folder, to Favorites. Then move it.

A section holds folders, and each folder is a favorite only once: moving it into a section takes it out of the other.

Fold, reorder, rename

• Fold one of your sections with a click on its title. Double-click the Favorites title to fold it: your sections fold away with it, and come back when you open it again.
• Reorder favorites by dragging them, within a section or from one section to another. Drag a section's title to move the whole section: yours stay together right under Favorites, and Favorites takes them along when you move it among the other sections (Clouds, Servers, Volumes, Searches, Tags, Trash).
• Rename or delete: the gear on a section's title, or a right-click on it, has Rename Section…, Delete Section…, Move Up, Move Down and Hide “Clients” (with the section's name). Deleting a section puts its favorites back in Favorites: none is lost.
• Give a favorite its own symbol: right-click it and choose Change Icon…. Only its row in the sidebar changes; the folder keeps its icon.

The same list is in Settings › Left Sidebar, under Sections: untick a section to hide it, drag it to change its place. Your sections are indented under Favorites, each with a pencil to rename it and a trash button to delete it, and New Section… sits below the list.

The Trash and AirDrop, in the same sidebar

The Trash is the last section of the left sidebar. A click opens it in a tab; files dropped on it go to the Trash, and ⌘Z brings them back. Its right-click menu has Open Trash and Empty Trash….

AirDrop isn't a row among your favorites: it's a small module under the sidebar's list. Drop files on it to send them, or click it to send what's selected in the active pane. If it isn't there, add it with the Modules button above the left sidebar.

Settings worth a look

• Favorites as Trees, in the gear of Favorites and in Settings › Left Sidebar: Turned off at first, so a favorite is a shortcut, as in the Finder. Full lets each favorite unfold into its subfolders; Compact unfolds only the path to the folder open in the active pane.
• Keep Shortcuts at the Top keeps favorites, searches and tags in a list of their own at the top, while the trees of your disks, clouds and servers scroll below it.
• The drawer (⌃⌥E) shows the same sections, with their titles, at the edge of the screen over any app: drop an attachment straight into a client's folder.

All of this is in both editions of Folia Files, the one from the website and the one from the Mac App Store.

Which one to use

If your sidebar holds a handful of folders, the Finder's list is enough: add, drag, remove. Once it grows past what you can read at a glance, named sections that fold put the clients you aren't working on today out of the way, and keep the photos apart from the invoices. To compare Folia Files with the other file managers that replace the Finder's sidebar, see the best Finder alternatives; and to open two of those folders at once, see how to view two folders side by side.