#How to create new folder in mac os x how to

How To Create Invisible Folders On Mac OS X.You can rename it and move it wherever you like. We recommend the open-source app SymbolicLinker for quickly adding a Services > Make Symbolic Link option right to the Finder’s context menu.Ĭlick the option it adds and it will create a symbolic link to the selected file or folder in the current directory. To be able to create symbolic links in Finder, you’ll need a third-party utility or script. They aren’t treated as true, transparent symbolic links.

Aliases are just like desktop shortcuts on Windows. The Finder can create aliases, but they won’t work quite like symbolic links. How to Create Symbolic Links With a Graphical Tool Run the command and specify the path to the link you want to delete: rm /path/to/link You can delete links from the command line using the rm command, which is the same command you’d use to remove other files. For example, to delete a symbolic link in Finder, Ctrl+click or right-click it and select “Move to Trash”. You can delete symbolic links like you would any other type of file. You can disable that feature, but we recommend that you don’t. RELATED: How to Disable System Integrity Protection on a Mac (and Why You Shouldn't)īear in mind that, on modern versions of macOS, you won’t be allowed to write to certain system locations without changing a low-level firmware option due to the System Integrity Protection feature. If you need to create a symbolic link in a system location your user account doesn’t have access to, you’ll need to prefix the ln command with the sudo command, like so: sudo ln -s /path/to/original /path/to/link It will enclose the path in quotation marks if necessary, too. To ease typing file and directory paths into the Terminal, you can drag-and-drop a folder from the Finder window into the Terminal and the Terminal will automatically fill in the path to that folder. So, if you wanted to create a link on your desktop to a folder named “My Files” inside your user directory, you’d need something like the following command: ln -s '/Users/name/My Files' '/Users/name/Desktop/My Link' If your file path contains spaces or other special characters, you’ll need to enclose it in quotation marks. That’s because it does-they’re just different views pointing to the same underlying directory on the file system. This folder will appear to contain all the same files as your Downloads folder. It’s actually the symbolic link you created, but it will look like the real thing. You’d run the following command: ln -s /Users/name/Downloads /Users/name/DesktopĪfter creating the link, you’d see your Downloads folder appear on your desktop. Let’s say you wanted to create a symbolic link in your Desktop folder that points to your Downloads folder. Most of the time symbolic links are the better choice, so don’t create a hard link unless you have a specific reason for doing so. If you want to create a hard link, you’d omit the -s. The -s here tells the ln command to create a symbolic link. Run the ln command in the following form. You can specify either a path to a directory or file: ln -s /path/to/original /path/to/link Navigate to Finder > Applications > Utilities > Terminal to launch the Terminal shortcut.

Press Command+Space, type “Terminal”, and then press “Enter” to open Terminal from Spotlight search. To create a symbolic link on a Mac, you’ll need to use the Terminal app.

Create Symbolic Links With the ln Command For example, you can’t create a hard link on one partition or disk pointing to a location on another partition or disk, while you can do that with a standard symbolic link. You should generally use standard symbolic links (soft links), if you’re not sure which to use. So, if you created a hard link from /Users/example pointing to /opt/example and later moved /opt/example, the link at /Users/example would still point to the file, no matter where you moved it. However, if you create a hard link, it will actually point to the underlying inode on the file system. If you move the file at /opt/example, the link at /Users/example will be broken. For example, let’s say you have a symbolic-or soft-link from /Users/example pointing to /opt/example. A symbolic or soft link points to a path in the file system. In addition to symbolic links, which are sometimes called “soft links”, you can instead create “hard links”. If you browse to the /Library/Program directory in the Finder or any other application, it will appear to contain the files inside /Volumes/Program. This is entirely transparent to the macOS operating system and the applications you use.