Creating a keyboard shortcut for “Show Path Bar” in Finder

Question

It seems there's no built-in keyboard shortcut for "Show Path Bar" in Finder. How can I create one?

Answer 1

Go to the Keyboard preference pane in System Preferences and choose the Keyboard Shortcuts tab. In the left column, choose Application Shortcuts like shown in the image below.

Click the plus button and add a keyboard shortcut entry for Finder for the "Show Path Bar" menu item. Since the title of the "Show Path Bar" menu item changes to "Hide Path Bar" once the path bar is shown, you might want to add a shortcut for that as well.

Answer 2

Use a Spark which will allow you to create a keyboard shortcut from an AppleScript. Then, create an AppleScript that clicks the "Show Path Bar" in the menu.

tell application "System Events"
    set UI_enabled to UI elements enabled
end tell
-- Checks to see if UI scripting is enabled
if UI_enabled is false then
    tell application "System Preferences"
        activate
        set current pane to pane id "com.apple.preference.universalaccess"
        display dialog "This script utilizes the built-in Graphic User Interface Scripting architecture of Mac OS x which is currently disabled." & return & return & "You can activate GUI Scripting by selecting the checkbox \"Enable access for assistive devices\" in the Universal Access preference pane." with icon 1 buttons {"Cancel"} default button 1
    end tell
end if
if UI_enabled is true then
    -- Actual code that clicks the button
    tell application "Finder" to activate
    tell application "System Events"
        tell process "Finder"
            tell menu bar 1
                tell menu bar item "View"
                    tell menu "View"
                        click menu item 12
                    end tell
                end tell
            end tell
        end tell
    end tell
end if