The Cluttered Sidebar
The Finder sidebar is the primary navigation hub in macOS, designed to give you instant access to your most frequently used folders and connected devices. By default, macOS tries to anticipate your networking needs by populating a specific “Shared” section in this sidebar. Whenever you connect to a Wi-Fi or Ethernet network, your Mac actively scans for other computers (like Windows PCs, NAS drives, or other Macs) broadcasting file-sharing protocols (like SMB or AFP) and automatically lists them under this “Shared” heading.
While this is incredibly convenient if you work in an office with a dedicated file server, it can be highly annoying if you are sitting in a public coffee shop or a university library. Your Finder sidebar will suddenly fill up with the names of dozens of random laptops belonging to strangers (e.g., “John’s MacBook Pro,” “Library-PC-04”) simply because they are on the same public Wi-Fi. Not only does this clutter your interface with useless links you cannot access without a password, but it also creates unnecessary visual noise. If you rarely connect to local network shares, or prefer to connect to them manually via the “Connect to Server” dialog, you should hide this section entirely.
How to Remove the Shared Section
You can force Finder to stop displaying discovered network computers via its dedicated preferences menu.
- Open a new Finder window.
- Look at the top Menu Bar, click on Finder, and select Settings… (or Preferences).
- In the settings window, click on the Sidebar tab at the top.
- Look down the list for the section labelled Shared.
- Uncheck the boxes next to “Connected servers,” “Bonjour computers,” or simply uncheck the main “Shared” category entirely depending on your macOS version.
The “Shared” category and all automatically discovered network devices will instantly disappear from your Finder sidebar, leaving a much cleaner navigation pane.