How to create a new file in a folder on Mac
You can do this with Note My, from the Finder, in the folder you are already standing in. Here is how, and exactly what you end up with when you do.
You are looking at a folder. You want a file in it — a README.md, a .gitignore, a scratch notes.md, a shell script — and you want it there, not in a Downloads folder to be dragged over afterwards. On most other desktops that is a right-click. On a Mac it usually turns into a trip to the Terminal, or a new empty document and a save dialogue where you navigate back to the folder you were already in.
Note My adds the missing menu. This guide covers the Finder route, the in-app route, what you actually end up with in the folder, and how to pick the right one for the moment you are in.
All of this happens on your Mac. Nothing about the file — its name, its contents, the folder it lives in — is ever uploaded, your files never leave the machine, and there is no account to make before you start.
Turn on the Finder extension first
The right-click items come from a Finder extension, and macOS keeps extensions switched off until you say otherwise. Turn it on from page 8 of the app's onboarding — the card is titled Finder extension, and it reads "Adds 'Note My ▸' to the right-click menu — open, compare, new from template, copy for AI, and more. You control it any time in System Settings." The card shows a green On badge once the extension is enabled, and an Enable… button when it is not. You can also switch it on directly in System Settings, and off again the same way.
Once it is on, every contextual menu in the Finder gains a single branded parent item, Note My ▸, carrying the app icon. Everything below lives inside it.
Create a file inside a folder
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Right-click the folder's empty background
Open the folder you want the file in and right-click a blank part of the window — not a file. You can also right-click the folder in the Finder's sidebar. This is the container menu, and it is the one that offers file creation for the current location.
The container menu holds five items: Open This Folder, New File Here… ▸, New File from Clipboard, Open in Terminal Here and Copy Folder Path.
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Choose New File Here…
Point at Note My ▸ New File Here… ▸ and a submenu opens. The first entry is Empty File…. Below it sits the extension's own grouped list of templates, so you can start from a pattern instead of a blank page.
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Or create a file next to one you have selected
If a file is already selected rather than the folder background, you get the items menu instead, and the equivalent entry is Note My ▸ New File Beside This… ▸. Same submenu — Empty File… plus the template list — but the new file lands alongside the one you clicked.
That menu also carries Open, Open in Background, Compare the 2 Files (only with exactly two selected), Concatenate & Open (more than one), Copy Path and Copy Relative Path, among others.
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Let it open in a tab
You do not have to go and find the file afterwards. It appears in the folder and Note My comes forward with it already open in a tab, ready to type into. If the app was not running, it launches first — give it a moment on that first command of the session. The tab is a real document at a real path, so ⌘S saves in place.
New File from Clipboard
The container menu's third item, New File from Clipboard, is the one to reach for when the thing you want in the folder is already on your clipboard — a block of configuration someone sent you, a stack trace, a snippet pulled out of an AI chat. It makes the file in the folder you right-clicked and opens it, with no submenu to walk through.
If the block came out of an AI chat and you suspect it is carrying invisible junk, Clean ▸ Clean AI Copy/Paste Markers applies our cleanup rules to the new file: the stray markers go, and your wording, punctuation, indentation and emoji are left exactly as they were. It reports afterwards what it left alone. Reach for it before you commit a pasted config or paste a command into a shell.
Empty file, or from a template
Empty File… gives you exactly that: a file at that path with nothing in it, ready to type into.
The template route gives you a file that already knows what it is. Our template library holds 40 built-in templates in four groups — Documents (8), Licenses (4), Config (10) and Languages (18) — and each template brings its own filename with it. The README template arrives as README.md, the Swift one as main.swift, the CI one as ci.yml, and all four licence templates as LICENSE.
| Group | Count | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Documents | 8 | README.md, CHANGELOG.md, CONTRIBUTING.md, SECURITY.md, bug_report.md |
| Licenses | 4 | MIT, BSD 3-Clause, ISC, Apache 2.0 (notice) — all written as LICENSE |
| Config | 10 | .gitignore, .editorconfig, Dockerfile, Makefile, tsconfig.json, pyproject.toml |
| Languages | 18 | main.swift, main.py, index.html, styles.css, main.go, script.sh |
Template bodies may contain smart tokens, which our template library fills in for you, so a new file arrives already dated and attributed. There are 14 of them — {{DATE}}, {{DATE_ISO}}, {{YEAR}}, {{AUTHOR}}, {{USER}}, {{UUID}}, {{FILENAME}}, {{PROJECT}}, {{CURSOR}} and the rest — which is why a licence turns up with the right year in it rather than a placeholder you have to remember to change. An unknown token is left untouched rather than blanked, and a backslash escapes one you meant literally.
What you end up with in the folder
You get a real file at a real path, in the folder you right-clicked, with no save panel to walk through and no navigating back to where you already were. That is the whole point of the feature.
Write-protected places are handled gracefully. Right-click inside a read-only disk image, a locked volume or a folder macOS guards, and you still come away with the document — open in a tab, ready to type into, with your work in front of you rather than lost to an error sheet. Point it wherever you like with ⇧⌘S for File ▸ Save As…. So if a new document appears in front of you but the Finder window behind it looks unchanged, that is the signal: the text is safe, and one save panel puts it somewhere you can write to.
Everything else behaves exactly as a file made any other way. It is a normal document at a normal path, so it can be moved, renamed, versioned, backed up, opened by any other tool on the Mac and picked up again later with nothing special required of you.
The right-click submenu is the quick path to the built-in templates, kept short so you can hit the one you want on the way past. Templates you saved yourself live under My Templates in the app, in File ▸ New from Template and the toolbar's Templates button — the route to take when you want to start from one of your own.
Naming, saving and moving it afterwards
A template arrives under the template's filename, so the second thing you usually want is a different name. There are two renames and they are not the same operation.
- Rename… is inline. Double-click the tab label, type, press Return. It renames the file in place, in the same folder, and works even if the document has unsaved edits.
- Rename File… opens a save panel and lets you pick any destination. It is an intentional move-and-rename, and it prompts you to save first if the document is dirty.
Around them sit the File menu's other disk actions — Save a Copy As… (⌥⇧⌘S), Duplicate File…, Reveal in Finder (⇧⌘R), Copy Path (⌥⇧⌘C) and Move to Trash…. They come alive the moment the document exists on disk, which is a useful signal in itself: if they are lit, you are working on a real file at a real path.
The in-app route
You do not need the Finder at all for this. ⌘N opens an untitled document in a new tab. Nothing appears in the Finder until you save it — our auto-recovery safety net looks after the text from your first keystroke, so an unexpected quit does not cost you what you had typed. All of that stays on your Mac: nothing is uploaded, there is no account, and your files never leave the machine. A new document takes its encoding and line ending from Settings; the defaults are UTF-8 and LF.
For a template, use File ▸ New from Template or the toolbar's Templates pull-down. Both show you the same list, and both include the fifth group, My Templates. Save Current Document as Template… in that same menu adds the document you are looking at to it; ⌥-clicking one of your own templates reveals a Delete "<name>" alternate.
Then save it into the folder with ⌘S. Save As suggests a filename extension to match the document's language, one our advanced language identifier recognises, so a file saved under the suggested name reopens with the same colouring rather than as plain text. Taking the suggestion is the least trouble; you can still type any name you want over it.
Troubleshooting
Getting "Note My ▸" to appear in the right-click menu
The extension is not enabled. Open the app's onboarding page 8 and use the Enable… button on the Finder extension card, or switch it on in System Settings. The card shows a green On badge as soon as the change takes effect.
Finding New File Here… in the menu
Right-click the folder background rather than a file. The two menus are different: file creation appears as New File Here… ▸ in the folder or sidebar menu, and as New File Beside This… ▸ when a file is selected. If you see Copy Relative Path and Compare the 2 Files, you are in the items menu.
Putting the file where you meant it to go
That folder is write-protected — a read-only image, a locked volume, or one macOS guards. Nothing is lost: the document is already open in front of you, contents and all, waiting for a destination. Give it one with ⇧⌘S, or use Rename File…, which lets you choose the name and the destination in the same step.
Starting from a template you saved yourself
Your own work lives under My Templates, in File ▸ New from Template and the toolbar Templates menu. Start the document there, then save it into the folder you wanted with ⇧⌘S — or make it in the folder first and use Rename File… to place it. Either way you end up with your own pattern, at the path you chose, in a couple of keystrokes.
The new file opened as plain text
A brand-new empty file starts as Plain Text, and there are two ways to change that. Give it the extension it is going to have — rename it notes.md or build.sh and our advanced language identifier gives you the colouring on the spot, so you get the right highlighting before you have typed a line. Or set the language yourself from the status bar's Identify pill, which opens the Language Inspector with an override pop-up and a Confirm button. Your choice stays put for that tab. Either route leaves your text exactly as you typed it; only the colouring changes.
The first command of the session takes a moment
If Note My is not already running, the first command of the session launches it, so give it a beat before trying again — every command after that is immediate. If the menu itself is not there yet, turn the extension on as described in the first item above.
What to do with the file next
The menu that made the file is also the fastest way to keep working with it. A handful of moves are worth learning early, because together they cover most of what you do in the minute after a file appears.
- Hand the path to something else. Copy Path and Copy Relative Path put the location on the clipboard, ready to drop into a build script, a shell command, or a question you are putting to an AI about that file.
- Open a shell in the same place. Open in Terminal Here sits in the container menu beside the creation items, so a fresh
script.shcan be run without typing a singlecd. - Line the new file up against an old one. Select the pair and choose Compare the 2 Files: our comparison view shows you where they diverge, which is the quickest way to check a new config against the one it replaces.
- Bring several files in at once. Open gives you a tab each, Open in Background loads them without stealing focus from what you are reading, and Concatenate & Open pulls a set in as one document you can search in a single pass.
- Give it the name it is going to have. Double-click the tab label and type. Our advanced language identifier picks up the new extension straight away, so the colouring arrives with the name and your text is untouched by the change.
- Tidy anything pasted in. If the contents came from a chat window or a web page, Clean ▸ Clean AI Copy/Paste Markers lifts out the invisible markers and leaves your wording exactly as it was.
None of this needs the file to be finished, saved twice, or moved anywhere first. You right-click, you get a file, and the rest of the toolkit is already pointed at it.
Frequently asked questions
Can I create a file in a folder without using the Terminal?
Yes. Enable the Finder extension, right-click inside the folder and choose Note My ▸ New File Here… ▸, then either Empty File… or a template. The file is written to that folder and opens in a tab. If you do want a shell there anyway, the same menu offers Open in Terminal Here.
What name does a template file get?
Its own. Each of the 40 built-in templates carries a filename — README.md, .gitignore, main.py, ci.yml, and LICENSE for all four licence templates. To change it afterwards, double-click the tab label for an inline rename in the same folder, or use Rename File… to rename and move in one step.
How do I add my own template to the list?
Open the document you want to reuse and choose Save Current Document as Template… from the Templates menu. It joins a fifth group called My Templates in File ▸ New from Template and the toolbar pull-down, alongside the 40 built-in ones. ⌥-click one of your own to reveal the delete alternate. The list is yours to grow: anything you catch yourself retyping — a header block, a meeting note, a project skeleton — is worth saving once and starting from thereafter.
What encoding and line ending does a new file use?
UTF-8 and LF by default, both set in Settings. Preserve-BOM-on-save and warn-on-mixed-line-endings are on by default too. If you need something else, our encoding handling keeps two commands apart: File ▸ Encoding ▸ Convert to Encoding… changes what gets written when you save, while Reload with Encoding… shows you what is already there a different way.
Can I work with several files at once?
Yes. Select as many as you like and Open gives you a tab each, Open in Background loads them without pulling you away from what you are doing, and Concatenate & Open brings the whole selection in as a single document you can read or search in one pass. Creation runs one command per file, which is what keeps each new file landing exactly where you right-clicked — and the command is quick enough to fire off twice in a row.
Does the extension send anything anywhere?
Nothing is uploaded, there is no account and no telemetry. Making a file happens entirely on your own Mac, and your files never leave the machine — which is worth knowing when the folder you are working in holds client material or anything under an agreement.