Making the Backspace key go to the previous folder in Finder

Question

Is there an way of modding OSX so that it behaves a little more like Windows 7. Specifically I really want to be able to press BACKSPACE and for Finder to show the previous folder... just like Windows and Firefox both do.

I hope that's clear.

Answer 1

You can press CMD-[ (as shown in the "Go" menu). Using the regular way from there (Keyboard Preferences -> Keyboard Shortcuts and assign a new shortcut for the "Back" entry) doesn't work since the "Keyboard Shortcut" field does not accept the backspace character. But you can:

• Go to System Preferences, Keyboard, Keyboard shortcuts
• Create a new keyboard shortcut for Finder with the Menu Title "Back"
• Use any arbitrary keyboard shortcut

Then edit the file $HOME/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist and change the keyboard shortcut to "⌫" for example using XCode:

Now, if you restart Finder (using killall Finder or the Force Quit Applications dialog) you will be able to use the shortcut:

However, as pointed out in the comments, the backspace key is probably not usable in the keyboard dialog for a reason, since using it as a shortcut will trigger the action when you have the cursor in an edit box, where you'd want backspace to remove characters.