How to add a Finder smart folder to the Sidebar

Smart folders are a highly useful feature in the Finder to provide live search results based on simple to extremely complex criteria. For example, if you want to keep tabs on large files on your drives, you can create a smart folder to find all files above 1GB. Or you do as I did and recreate the missing All My Files search that Apple removed from the Finder for no apparent reason with macOS 10.13 High Sierra.

However, smart folders have an irritating aspect: as you create one, you can opt to add it to the Sidebar in the Finder. If you don’t choose to add it at that moment, you are likely mystified as to why you can’t create a link later. It has to do with how Apple stores these searches as pseudo-folders.

Here’s the trick to add a Sidebar link to a smart folder after its creation:

1. Choose Go > Go to Folder.
2. Enter ~/Library/Saved Searches and press Return.
3. Select the saved search, which appears like a purple folder.
4. Press Command-Control-T or choose Finder > Add to Sidebar.
5. The link appears at the bottom of your Favorites entries. Drag it to the position you want in the list.

You can also prune smart folders by deleting their entries from the Saved Searches folder.

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