This Mac tip is provided by Mark Greentree and was originally posted on Mark’s blog – Everyday Mac Support. For more of Mark’s tips visit his site, follow him on Twitter, or browse his archive of posts here.
By default folders are displayed with relatively little information. One example is when using icon view in the Finder window.
Are you interested in finding out how many items are contained within each folder?
All you need to do is switch your Finder window to display as icons by either pressing Command + 1 on your keyboard or navigating to View > As Icons from the Menu Bar. You can also click the following button in any Finder window as shown below:
Then you will need to bring up the view options by navigating to View > Show View Options from the menu bar. You could also press Command + J which will bring up your view options as shown below:
You will notice I have highlighted ‘Show Item Info’ in the image above. This setting which be activated in order to showcase how many items a folder has contained within. By default this will be deselected.
With this option turned on your folders will then display like this:
As you can see you now have the total amount of items included in each folder.
The calculated items include files, folders, and applications. Any content located in addition folders within a folder as shown in the example above will not be counted to the overall total.
Please note that alias folders will not display the number of items contained within. Burn Folders however will display the total number of items contained within.