Remove Those Pesky Sidebar Items With This One Keyboard Trick [OS X Tips]

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Sidebar Items

It used to be so easy to remove items from the sidebar of OS X Finder windows. You’d simply click, drag, and poof! The offending item would disappear like a well-heeled Dock icon in search of greater opportunity in the world.

Today, however (and for quite some time, really) you can’t just click and drag the sidebar items away without giving it a little more thought. That’s where this handy keyboard shortcut comes in.

Sure, you could use the right-click (Control-click or two-finger click on a trackpad) to bring up a contextual menu, but where’s the fun in that?

When you want to remove items from the Sidebar, including things like AirDrop, Desktop, All My Files, Downloads, Applications, Documents, and the like, you’ll need to hold down the Command key and then click and drag it away.

Right? So simple it hurts. But there’s probably a reason the software geniuses at Apple changed this behavior.

My guess is that too many people were randomly clicking on Sidebar items and then losing them, and then having no clue how to get them back over there.

If you don’t, then here’s the trick for putting items into the Sidebar. Find the folder you want there, Documents or Downloads or whatever, and drag it to a spot in the Sidebar. If you drag it between items already there, you’ll see a blue line show up where it will end up. If you drag it to the bottom, it will go at the bottom of the list. Slick, right?

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