How to Always Show Expanded Save and Print Dialogs on Mac

Whenever you save a new document in macOS applications such as TextEdit, Pages, Preview, Word, or Safari, the operating system presents a compact modal dialogue sheet. This minimal view shows only the file name field, tags, and a basic drop-down menu with a few recent folder destinations. If you want to navigate your file system, browse external drives, or create a new subfolder, you must manually click the small disclosure arrow icon next to the “Save As” field every single time.

Similarly, the standard macOS Print dialogue defaults to an abbreviated prompt hiding duplex printing, paper trays, page scaling, and colour profiles behind a “Show Details” button. Fortunately, macOS maintains global user defaults that control dialog expansion behaviour. By executing a few straightforward terminal commands, you can permanently configure macOS to display fully expanded Save and Print dialogues across all applications by default.

Configuring Expanded Save Dialogs via Terminal

The global system preference for save sheet expansion is governed by NSGlobalDomain settings.

1. Open the Terminal application on your Mac (press Command + Space, type Terminal, and press Enter, or find it in Applications > Utilities).
2. To force all standard macOS applications to open the expanded file browser Save dialogue by default, type or paste the following commands into the terminal:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NavPanelExpandedStateForSaveMode -bool true
defaults write NSGlobalDomain NavPanelExpandedStateForSaveMode2 -bool true

3. Press Enter to execute the configuration changes.

From this point forward, pressing Command + S or selecting File > Save As… in any Mac app immediately reveals your complete Finder navigation sidebar, full folder tree hierarchy, and search bar.

Configuring Expanded Print Dialogs via Terminal

To eliminate the need to click “Show Details” whenever printing documents or exporting PDFs, configure the print panel defaults:

1. In the Terminal window, enter the following commands:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain PMPrintingExpandedStateForPrint -bool true
defaults write NSGlobalDomain PMPrintingExpandedStateForPrint2 -bool true

2. Press Enter.

All future print prompts will automatically present full printer settings, including layout options, page orientation, colour management, and finishing presets.

Applying the Changes Across Active Applications

Because running applications cache global defaults when launched, new settings will not affect software currently open in memory. To ensure your changes apply everywhere:

• Quit and relaunch any open applications (e.g. Command + Q in Safari or Word, then reopen).
• Alternatively, restart the macOS Dock and Finder services, or simply restart your Mac:

  killall Finder && killall Dock

How to Revert Back to Compact Dialogs

If you ever decide to restore the original compact Apple factory defaults, you can delete the custom overrides or toggle them back to false:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NavPanelExpandedStateForSaveMode -bool false
defaults write NSGlobalDomain NavPanelExpandedStateForSaveMode2 -bool false
defaults write NSGlobalDomain PMPrintingExpandedStateForPrint -bool false
defaults write NSGlobalDomain PMPrintingExpandedStateForPrint2 -bool false

Alternatively, remove the keys completely to return the system to its unmanaged state:

defaults delete NSGlobalDomain NavPanelExpandedStateForSaveMode
defaults delete NSGlobalDomain NavPanelExpandedStateForSaveMode2
defaults delete NSGlobalDomain PMPrintingExpandedStateForPrint
defaults delete NSGlobalDomain PMPrintingExpandedStateForPrint2