If you choose the Apple menu, then Recent Items, you’ll see a list of recent apps, documents, and servers. Some apps, such as Calendar, Reminders, and Notes can’t open files, but manage data directly. As above, this menu only contains a limited number of files. If you click and hold an app icon in your Mac’s Dock, you’ll see that there’s a menu showing recent items, if the app can open files. You can adjust this number in System Settings > Desktop & Dock, by choosing a number from none to 50 for Recent documents, applications, and servers. Note that this menu only stores a limited number of files. Choose File > Open Recent, then select the file. If you’ve worked on a file in a specific app, you can re-open it from that app’s Open Recent menu. If you want to view a file when you’re in an Open dialog, you can select and it press the space bar to view it in Quick Look. Just press Command-O in your app, navigate to the file, select it, and click Open or press Return. Open any File from an Open DialogĪs discussed in an article about using the Open and Save dialogs, you can open any file from an app’s Open dialog (if that app supports the file type). You can also press Command-O to open a selected file. As with double-clicking, the file opens with the app its file type is associated with. Select a file in a Finder window or on the Desktop, and press Command-down-arrow.

You can also open a file from the keyboard. If that app can open the file, the icon will highlight, and when you drop the file the app will launch (if it’s not already running) and display the file.

You can open a file by dragging it onto an app icon, either in a Finder window, or in the Dock. If you receive a file as an attachment to an email, you can open it by double-clicking it, as you would a file in the Finder. Only one app can open each file type when you double-click it, but as you’ll see below, you can open files with other apps, and you can change the default app that opens a given file type. numbers files that open with the Pages and Numbers apps. Some file extensions are clearer about which app opens them, such as. By default, it opens with the application that is assigned to work with its file type so, if you have Microsoft Office on your Mac, a. The basic way to open a file on the Mac - and on Windows as well - is to double-click a file. Here are a dozen ways you can open files on a Mac. You can open files in windows, from menus, and from dialogs. But did you know that there are lots of different ways to open files? You can use your mouse, your trackpad, or even your keyboard. You open files every time you use your Mac, most often, probably, by double-clicking them.

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