How to View Two Folders Side by Side on a Mac (and Reopen Them)

The short answer: the Finder can't show two folders in one window. It shows one folder per window, so the built-in way is to open two Finder windows and tile them on the screen — on macOS 15 and later, macOS can snap them to the left and right halves for you. That works for a quick copy. It doesn't give you a "copy to the other side" key, and nothing lets you save the pair of folders and reopen it next week.

Below are both routes: what macOS does on its own, step by step, and what a dual-pane file manager adds when you do this every day.

Two folders side by side with the Finder alone

Open the second folder in its own window

In the Finder, go to the first folder, then press ⌘N for a new window and go to the second folder there. You can also hold ⌘ while you double-click a folder to open it in a new window (or in a new tab, depending on your Finder settings).

Tile the two windows (macOS 15 and later)

macOS 15 Sequoia added window tiling:

• Drag a window to the left or right edge of the screen; when the outline appears, let go and it fills that half.
• Or, with one of the two windows in front, open the Window menu, choose Move & Resize, and pick Left & Right under Arrange: the two front windows share the screen.
• Hover over the green button in the top-left corner of a window to see the same options.

On older versions of macOS, you can resize the two windows by hand, or use Split View from the green button (both windows go full screen).

Copy or move between the two windows

Drag files from one window to the other. Between two folders on the same disk, dragging moves; hold ⌥ to copy instead. With the keyboard: ⌘C in the first window, then ⌘V in the second to paste a copy, or ⌥⌘V to move the items there.

Where the Finder stops

• Tabs don't help here. Finder tabs (⌘T) keep several folders in one window, but you see only one at a time.
• Two windows aren't a pair. Each window keeps its own size and place; move one and the other doesn't follow. There's no "the other folder" for a copy command to aim at.
• Nothing to reopen. macOS can bring windows back when you log in again, but you can't save "Client folder + Invoices + Shared drive" under a name and call it up when you need it. Every time, you open and arrange the windows again.

If you do this once a month, the Finder is enough. If you compare folders, sort downloads or move project files every day, a dual-pane layout saves a lot of window juggling.

Panes side by side in Folia Files

Folia Files is a file manager for Mac built around panes: one window, as many folders as you need, side by side or one above the other. Panes, tabs and scenes shows the whole feature; here are the steps for this exact job.

Split the window

Drag the New Pane button from the toolbar and drop it on an edge — of the window or of a pane. The window splits there, and the new pane opens on the same folder in the same view. Navigate the new pane to your second folder and you're done.

You can also use the keyboard: ⌘<kbd></kbd> (View › Clone Pane Beside) and ⇧⌘<kbd></kbd> (Clone Pane Below). The Layouts button in the toolbar offers classic layouts — two side by side, two stacked, three columns, a 2 × 2 grid — when you want more than two.

Each pane has its own folder and its own view: a list on one side, icons or a gallery on the other, a tree for a project. Drop a pane's header on another pane's header to swap them.

Copy and move with F5 and F6

Select files in one pane and press F5 (File › Copy to Other Pane) or F6 (File › Move to Other Pane) — the way commander-style file managers have always worked. On many Mac keyboards the top row controls brightness and volume first, so you may need to hold fn. Dragging from one pane to the other works too, and every operation goes to the history, so ⌘Z undoes it.

If you're coming from Windows and Total Commander, the page Total Commander for Mac compares the habits that carry over.

Reopen the same folders later: scenes

This is the part the Finder doesn't have. In Folia Files, a scene is a tab saved as it is: its layout, the folder in each pane, and how each pane shows it.

Save a scene

1. Arrange a tab the way you like — for example, the client's folder, its invoices and the shared drive.
2. Click Layouts in the toolbar and choose Save Tab as Scene… (also in Window › Scenes).
3. Give it a name. Keep With the panes' folders checked to save the folders too; uncheck it to save only the arrangement, which then opens on the active pane's folder. With the window's size and place brings the window back to the same size and screen.

Reopen it

• Window › Scenes: the first nine scenes have shortcuts, ⌃⌘1 to ⌃⌘9.
• File › New Tab with a Scene… (⇧⌘T): a grid of thumbnails, each drawn with its panes. Type to filter by name, press ↩ to open it in a new tab, or ⌥↩ to open it in place of the current tab.

A scene opens in a new tab, so whatever you were doing stays where it was.

Workspaces: the whole window

When one tab isn't enough, Window › Workspaces › Save Workspace… saves the whole window: every tab with its panes, folders and views, plus the window's size and place. Reopen it later from the same menu, in the current window or in a new one.

Which one should you use?

• Once in a while: two Finder windows, tiled with the Window menu or by dragging to the screen edges.
• Every day: two panes in one window, F5 and F6 between them, and a scene for each recurring job so you never arrange the same folders twice.

Panes, scenes and workspaces are in both versions of Folia Files, the one from the website and the one from the Mac App Store, and the 7-day trial lets you try them on your own folders.