Here's a tip that (vaguely) follows on from 10 Tips for Mastering Finder Windows that I posted a few days ago. You know that little button in the top right of finder windows? Yes, the one that Windows users always click accidentally when trying to close the window. It normally just shows and hides the toolbar, but there is some great extra functionality.

If you want to customize the items in your toolbar (and there’s nothing wrong with that), just Command-Option-click the little white pill-shaped button at the top right of your window’s title bar, and the Customize Toolbar dialog will appear, right there in your window. Now you can just drag-and-drop icons onto the toolbar.

As well as dragging the customize items to your toolbar, you can also now drag files or folders as well. However, if you are only adding files to the toolbar you can just hold Command-Option while dragging them there - you don't need to bring up the customize dialog box.

From the customize dialog that appears you can choose from a number of items (shown below) and change the view options - icon, text or both.

The added benefit of Command-Control clicking this button is that it works in every application that allows you to customize the Toolbar. Note that these other applications don't allow you to drag your own files, folders, applications etc. to the toolbar. You can only choose items from the dialog box.