Stacks are a feature found in

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancestor, ' ...

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

, starting in

Mac OS X Leopard Mac OS X Leopard (version 10.5) is the sixth software versioning, major release of macOS, Apple Inc., Apple's desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. Leopard was released on October 26, 2007 as the successor of Mac OS X Tig ...

. As the name implies, they "stack" files into a small organized folder on the Dock. At the WWDC07 Keynote Presentation, Steve Jobs stated that in Leopard, the user will be given a default stack called ''Downloads'', in which all downloaded content will be placed. In the initial release of Leopard, Stacks could be shown two ways, in a "fan" or a "grid". With the release of the 10.5.2 update, a third "list" view was added. This list view allows folder icons to display their contents in pop-out side menus. Originally, if the fan view was too long to fit within the screen, it was automatically displayed as a grid. The user could also choose to have a fan stack always display as a grid, but they could not choose to make it fan out (due to the reason above). After the update, the top item in the fan would allow the user to open the folder in a Finder window. The list view also shows an Options pop-out menu which, when opened, allows users to change the display method used by the Stack (fan, grid or list), the order items in the Stack are displayed (by name, date created, date modified, date added and kind), and the appearance of the Stack icon in the dock (folder or stack). These options are available in the other three methods by either right-clicking on the icon with the right button of a two-button mouse, or by holding down the Control key on the keyboard while simultaneously clicking with a one-button mouse. Holding down the primary mouse button will target the contextual menu as well. With the release of

Mac OS X Snow Leopard Mac OS X Snow Leopard (version 10.6) is the seventh major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. Snow Leopard was publicly unveiled on June 8, 2009 at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference. ...

, Stacks have been further enhanced. Stacks will allow viewing a subfolder without moving to a Finder window. Stacks have also been modified to include scroll-bars for folders with many files.

References

Apple's official page about Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
{{macOS MacOS user interface Graphical user interface elements

See also

References