Help With The Sidebar

[rk0071]

This is a quick question, but I accidentally deleted the "Today" folder on the side bar under "Search for" on Finder. Does anyone know how I can get it back their? I can get something similar, but it now has a folder like the all images, movies, and documents, rather than the clock thing that's on the yesterday or past week folder.

Thanks for your help.

Let me know if you don't know what I'm talking about or haven't been too clear.

[ora]

In the Finder, click the menu called 'Finder' and select 'Preferences'

Click the icon marked 'Sidebar' then under the last section (Search For) check the box next to 'Today'.

[applemaz]

How do I stop the "Side Bar" entry "Search For" Search Criteria for "Today" from showing anything? If I drag the items there (such as applications) to the trash, they are removed from the hard drive. I don't want to go to the Side Bar preferences and uncheck the Today box to hide it, because anyone could just go in and turn it back on or do their own search criteria to reveal what was used "Today". What I want is to stop MacOS X from tracking when something was opened by clearing some cache that keeps track of this. The result should be that when someone does the search query or looks at Today in the Side Bar, nothing shows up, because I reset the tracker to null. Anyone know how to do this?

[ElDiabloConCaca]

Originally Posted by applemaz

Anyone know how to do this?

The easiest way is to stop letting people who are not you use your account on the computer.

If someone else wants to use the computer, create an account for them or let them use the "Guest Account."

Sharing your account is bad ju-ju and is begging for problems. You and only you should use your account, and it should be protected with a reasonably strong password.

...but what happens when someone pops their head into the room and says, "I just need to look up [blah blah] on the internet, real quick!" Simple: simply activate Fast User Switching to the Guest Account and let them look it up.

In addition, the data that is used to track what you've used "Today" may not be "untrackable" -- for instance, if you created a Smart Folder that tracked all files created in the last two days, well, that's something that can be found outside of a Smart Folder, too -- by the file's creation date. You cannot change a file's creation date. Similarly, you cannot change a file's modification date -- which is most likely what the Smart Folder "Today" is using.

I don't think there's any hidden metadata or special "Mac OS X-specific" data that's being tracked anywhere -- I think the "Today" folder is simply looking at files' creation and/or modification dates, and those are things that you cannot get rid of.

[applemaz]

I found that one can use the UNIX touch command in the UNIX Terminal to set the date and time of a files Created date and Last Modified date, but this will NOT change a files Last Opened date.

I'm still looking for a way to change the Last Opened date, other than opening Date & Time Preferences, changing the date to a specific date in the past, opening up the file(s) I want to show as last opened on this date and then close them and reset the date and time to the current date and time.

[DeltaMac]

Wouldn't that really screw up your use of backup software, such as Time Machine ?

[ibtrotter]

Go to system/library/coreservices/finder Right click and select "show package contents" Open contents/resources/cannedsearches/ Beware, only delete those files that you dont need, as trashing seems to actually delete the file, just as deleting it out of the sidebar would.

[DeltaMac]

Isn't that a bad place to remove files? I don't think that will reset the canned searches, but will remove the setup for that search folder, and may even cripple the finder, if you're not careful about that deletion. That then wouldn't be fixed until you put a good Finder app back in place, or do an archive & Install of the system.