Three ways to quickly navigate up to a parent or enclosing folder in the folder hierarchy

Sometimes you might find yourself really deep down a folder hierarchy on your Mac in the Finder window and wonder where you are and what the parent folder is.

Here are three ways to know your exact location and go up the Mac OS X folder hierarchy in a jiffy.

These methods work well in Icon, List or Cover Flow view.

Method 1 - Go to the immediate parent, or enclosing folder

Simply press Command + up arrow and you’ll be taken to the immediate parent folder.

Method 2 - Reveal all folders up the folder hierarchy

You might want to see, at a glance, the immediate parent folder and all folders up the hierarchy, and then navigate to any one of them.

1. Simply hold down the Command key and click on the title or name of the current Finder window. You will see a list of folders above your current folder in the hierarchy.
2. Click the name of the parent folder you wish to navigate to.

Method 3 - Show the path bar

Showing the path bar clutters up your Finder window a bit, but is handy if you happen to need to navigate up and down the folder hierarchy a lot and need to see where you are at all times.

First, show the path bar in your Finder window by selecting from the Finder menu View > Show Path Bar.

Finally, you jump to the parent folder of your choice simply by double-clicking on the Folder name from the list that appears at the bottom of your Finder window.

Tags: finder, Mac OS X