It’s seems there’s no way to do this, but thought I would ask. On Windows you can type all or part of the file name to narrow the selection, and so you don’t have to reach for the mouse.
If I hit cmd-f in the open dialog, the search box is selected, but search defaults to This Mac, even though I have Search the Current Folder selected in Finder prefs.
You can just start typing the beginning of a file name, but that isn’t quite the same as searching.
This is what I do also.
There’s an invisible tolerance to it too that it helps to know of for anyone new. Say there’s a list of:
Jake
John
Oliver
j will highlight Jake.
jo will highlight John.
But j … pause … o will highlight Jake, then switch to Oliver.
This is really helpful, thanks!
I’ve been using Macs for 20 years and didn’t know this.
