23-04-2021



Mac OS X doesn’t have an obvious way to view the exact text based path to a folder (otherwise known as a directory) in the finder window. You can have it show a graphical path, but getting just the text based path to a directory (for use in the Terminal for example) requires a couple of extra steps.

If you are using Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or Apple Safari to join or host a meeting, you will see a dialog box to launch the Zoom application. In Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, you can choose to always open links with Zoom, but this is not currently supported in Safari. This article covers: Google Chrome; Mozilla Firefox; Safari. For Apple School Manage, in the Apple portal, choose MDM Servers Add MDM Server. Enter the MDM Server Name, and then choose Next. The server name is for your reference to identify the mobile device management (MDM) server. It is not the name or URL of the Microsoft Intune server. The Add dialog box opens, stating Upload Your.

Yosemite users special note

Apple removed the ability to easily copy the file path in OS X Yosemite. Yosemite users must now follow a complicated procedure of creating a Service to do this simple task or take the path directly from the command line.

El Capitan - Built in file path copy function

If you are a El Capitan user you are in luck, Apple has now created a specific command to capture the file path. Instructions on how to use this can be found here.

Mavericks and below - How to find the Absolute Path to a folder on Mac OS X

Here are the instructions for finding the file path on Mavericks and below...

The first thing to do is identify the folder you need to know the full path for. In this example it’s the “month 1″ folder of my Insanity Workout folder (and yes, I did buy Insanity, directly from Amazon actually and these are my back-ups. It’s not pirated like so much Beachbody stuff unfortunately is!):

Now we can simply press the “cmd+i” keys together to open up the “Get Info” window. This displays various bits of info about the folder as you can see below:

You can see that the Get Info window contains the line “Where:” followed by the text folder path. This is the path to the folder we have been looking for. The path to the folder is highlighted and made clearer in the screenshot below:

You can now copy this text based absolute folder path and paste it into your Terminal window. NOTE – If the directory path contains spaces, as the example i have used in this post does, you MUST use ” quotation ” marks around the path when typing it into the Terminal. The screenshot below demonstrates this:

Why might I need to know how to find the path to a folder on Mac?

Knowing the text based absolute path to a folder can be useful for a number of reasons. Being able to locate the precise path allows you to unlock the full power of the Terminal, which can often be faster and more efficient that using the Graphical User Interface.

Mac OS X doesn’t have an obvious way to view the exact text based path to a folder (otherwise known as a directory) in the finder window. You can have it show a graphical path, but getting just the text based path to a directory (for use in the Terminal for example) requires a couple of extra steps.

Yosemite users - special note

Apple removed the ability to easily copy the file path in OS X Yosemite. Yosemite users must now follow a complicated procedure of creating a Service to do this simple task or take the path directly from the command line.

UrlUrl helper for mac

El Capitan - Built in file path copy function

Url Snooper For Mac

Url For Mac

If you are a El Capitan user you are in luck, Apple has now created a specific command to capture the file path. Instructions on how to use this can be found at teh link below:

Url extractor for mac

Mavericks and below - How to find the Absolute Path to a folder on Mac OS X

Here are the instructions for finding the file path on Mavericks and below...

The first thing to do is identify the folder you need to know the full path for. In this example it’s the “month 1″ folder of my Insanity Workout folder (and yes, I did buy Insanity, directly from Amazon actually and these are my back-ups. It’s not pirated like so much Beachbody stuff unfortunately is!):

For

Now we can simply press the “cmd+i” keys together to open up the “Get Info” window. This displays various bits of info about the folder as you can see below:

You can see that the Get Info window contains the line “Where:” followed by the text folder path. This is the path to the folder we have been looking for. The path to the folder is highlighted and made clearer in the screenshot below:

You can now copy this text based absolute folder path and paste it into your Terminal window. NOTE – If the directory path contains spaces, as the example i have used in this post does, you MUST use ” quotation ” marks around the path when typing it into the Terminal. The screenshot below demonstrates this:

Why might I need to know how to find the path to a folder on Mac?

Url Snooper For Mac

Knowing the text based absolute path to a folder can be useful for a number of reasons. Being able to locate the precise path allows you to unlock the full power of the Terminal, which can often be faster and more efficient that using the Graphical User Interface.