While professional troubleshooters will use software like fseventer or the Instruments.app that comes as part of Xcode, there’s an easy way for anyone to see which files have recently been accessed on their Mac.

1. Open any Finder window and hit ‘command-F’.

2. Click the ‘Kind’ button and choose ‘Other’ at the bottom of the menu:

3. Next, scroll down the list till you see ‘System files’ and check the box and hit ‘OK’.

4. Change the button that says ‘aren’t included’ to ‘are included’.

5. Now hit the little ‘+’ button over on the right side of the window.

6. Again, change ‘Kind’, this time to ‘Last Modified’ and change ‘within last’ to ‘today’.

7. Finally, go to Finder > View menu at the top and choose ‘Arrange By > Date Last Opened’.

You can save the search in the Sidebar for convenience. Give it a more useful name like ‘latest changes’ or ‘fs events’ (“fs” stands for filesystem) and click on it whenever you need to check what’s just happened to your Mac! 🙂