What? What? What? I don’t get it.
I use them constantly. My favorite: you can right click on a proxy icon to navigate to the folder where the original file is, or up the hierarchy. I think you used to have to option-click or something, right-click is much easier. I remember casually doing this operation while working on a friend’s computer, and he flipped out. “What was that? Do it again! I never knew MacOS could do that!! I could use that all the time!”
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I wish there was an option for “ALL the time!”
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How interesting! I have never heard of proxy icons until now, despite using Macs for many years!
It drives me nuts that Excel has a “fake” proxy icon. Several times a day I try and grab it and it won’t budge.
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Sometimes I’m in a document but I’m not sure it’s the right copy. Eg, if I open a file via spotlight, sometimes it’s the attachment to an email I sent, not the original. How do I know I have the right one? I command click the proxy icon to see its path. That way I know what file I’m dealing with.
I think that’s the only use case I have. Maybe I should revisit these other possibilities.
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I didn’t recognize the term “Proxy Icon” but, yes, I use them all the time. Drag the icon of a folder of scripts on to BBEdit’s dock icon to open them together in a folder window; drag the icon of a folder of images to GraphicConverter to browse the folder; drag a file open in one app to open it in another. Very handy.
Never knew about them. Thanks for the great tip!!
Affinity do similar - very annoying.
I use this mostly for attaching PDFs I have open in Preview to an email.
Use this daily.
In fact, am so in the habit of doing this that when I use Windows (also daily) I frequently drag visible icons into Windows Open dialog and end up moving the file to the dialog’s folder (the behaviour’s action is on the dragged file, rather than the target dialog…the opposite of the proxy icon dragging behaviour).
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At first I thought that I didn’t use them, but then I realised I use it quite often just to check that the document is in the folder that it should be - excellent feature.
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Doug has already highlighted how I use it as well.
Excel’s proxy icon is draggable @ MS Office 2021 + Ventura
I used to use them all the time @ Open/Save dialogs… until I Installed Default Folder
Glad to learn about all the other uses - thanks
Before changing the Accessibility setting, I noticed, if you click near the beginning of a name (doc or folder), the icon appears right away
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Strange. I normally don’t use it, but I just tried (Excel 16.75.2 (23071901), Microsoft 365 subscription). It works for me. Dragging the icon saves a copy of the currently-active sheet to wherever I dropped it.
I seem to remember in the past, that the icon would only work if the file was saved. Dragging it would make a copy of the saved file. If you change something (and Excel is overly sensitive about what constitutes a “change”), it would not be draggable until after you save the changes. But I didn’t see that behavior today.
I chose Occasionally because I do not often have a use for it. But when I do, it is a beloved feature and at work (Windows 10) I am constantly annoyed I don’t have it.
Occasional user, perhaps more often now that I’ve unhidden it (thanks for that reminder). I appreciate Default Folder enormously, maybe that compensates. But I think I mostly just haven’t gotten around to learning the possibilities.
When it comes to creating “aliases” (or something similar) of emails from within Mail, I often drag from the title field to a note in Notes. Works great. Not sure if that’s what previous commenters do, or if they mean something else.
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This was a feature from earlier Mac OS that I was glad to get back. I often use it when looking for a specific file to attach to an email message or similar situation.
On Default Folder: I’m surprised Apple never brought that functionality into the Open File dialog. I’ve been using that for decades!
For me, the proxy icons for Excel files work for me unless the files I am working on is opened from OneDrive - then, despite the fact that the OneDrive files are still stored locally, the proxy icon is un-draggable.
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