hi this is gary with macmost.com today
let's take a look
at your max hard drive to understand how
files and folders are organized
[Music]
macmost is brought to you thanks to a
great group of more than 750 supporters
go to macmost.com patreon there you
could read more about the patreon
campaign
join us and get exclusive content and
course discounts
so you don't need to know why different
folders and files are in different
places on your mac
but it can be useful to understand how
your mac works and get more out of it
so here i am with a finder window and
i'm going to go
to the computer level so the top level
and i'm also going to switch to column
view
now here at the top level we'll see our
main hard drive you'll also see any
other external drives i've got two here
and an item here to access network
things but what we're interested in here
is your macintosh hard drive now it may
be called macintosh hd but it doesn't
have to be
it could be called mac hd it could be
called gary's hd could be called
anything
but for most of us it's going to be the
default macintosh hd
this is also referred to as the internal
drive or main drive
of your mac in mac os catalina at the
top level we have
four folders here the first one that i
want to point out is the system folder
and this contains the mac os operating
system and catalina and beyond
is also read only so you can't actually
go in here and edit the files you can
look around and see what's there but you
can't do anything to alter them
at least not easily and this is a good
thing because it protects your system
against malware because even if you
install a piece of malware
it can't write to the system so it can't
change how mac os works
you also have three other folders here
one is called
the applications folder and this
contains apps
things like pages numbers keynote text
edit mail
safari any app that you installed on
your mac is probably going to end up
here
the reason this is at the system level
is that if you have multiple user
accounts
on your mac say for you and your spouse
you can share the same apps
you don't have to install pages and your
spouse install pages as well you install
it once on the computer
and both user accounts can access pages
so when you install
new apps say the mac app store or using
a third-party
app installer it's going to end up here
at the system level or main level
in the applications folder now you also
have a folder here called library
this will contain support files for
different apps
so for instance here if i look in the
audio folder here i'll see various
things that are used by garageband
maybe logic pro if you have that maybe
other music and audio recording apps as
well
the idea here is the applications
themselves are exactly the applications
if you have an application i have an
application
we have the same file here but in the
library we may have different things i
may have installed extra plugins
content themes all sorts of things for
different apps and they would go into
the system
library folder now in general you never
need to look at or mess around with the
system
library or applications folder but the
users folder
that's where your stuff is going to be
now in the users folder there's going to
be a separate folder for every user on
your mac
for most of us only one person uses the
mac so we only have one user account but
you could have a situation where you
have multiple people using the same mac
and they should each have their own user
account each user account can have its
own icloud account
can have its own files settings and
other things so in this case i have two
user accounts here
one is my main user account that i use
for creating apps maintaining websites
doing things like that
another one the one i'm currently using
and you can see it has a little house
icon to indicate
its user account i'm currently using
that's this one
and i use it to make tutorials you also
may find a shared folder in here
and that's a way for you to share files
easily between user accounts
so if you go with an apartment metaphor
you can think of each user account as a
separate apartment
only the person that lives there has
access to it with a key their password
and you can't get into somebody else's
apartment the system and library are
like the building itself
it's the structure things like the water
pipes the electricity
and things that everybody accesses like
maybe the entryway
and the workout room in the hallways and
the stairs in the elevator
the shared folder is like a common room
that anybody with an apartment can
access
but most people probably don't use it
now when we go into a user folder
we're going to see some common folders
in here so chances are you have these
same folders
maybe more most notably there's your
desktop and documents folder
these are the two places where you can
put all of your files so when you create
files using different apps or download
things
you can put them in the desktop or
documents folder best practice is to
store as much as you can in your
documents folder
and create folders inside of here to
organize things
some people may only have a handful of
files and just have them in their
documents folder
other people may have hundreds or
thousands of files and may want to
organize them into folders and
subfolders and
everybody's documents folder is going to
look a little different you can also use
the desktop folder in a similar way
except that the desktop folder has a
special property that anything that's in
here
is also going to appear on the desktop
here it's just two ways of viewing the
same files
so if you put too much stuff in your
desktop folder it's going to clutter
up the desktop which is why it's a good
idea to put a majority of your stuff in
here
and keep your desktop clean or maybe
just one or two
files that are there temporarily or
things you access all the time now the
rest of these folders
are here for special reasons and you're
probably going to find similar files in
here to what others have
for instance in your movies folder
you're probably going to find things
like your imovie library folder if you
use imovie
you may also find other apps that use
video store things here like for
instance i have the screenflow app
that records these tutorials puts a
folder here as well
the tv app also uses a folder here the
same thing is true
for music and pictures in the music
folder i find
another music folder for the music app
storing my music library
but i also find a folder for garageband
and some other apps as well
you may have different folders in here
depending upon which music or audio apps
you use in the pictures folder i have
just my photos library but if you have
other apps
that use the pictures folder they may
store their libraries
or have folders in here as well now
movies music and pictures folders are
completely accessible by you
and you can create your own folders in
here if you want or
never use them for instance in the
pictures folder if you have a large
clipart collection you purchase that you
use for work
you may want to put that in here it may
make sense to store them in the pictures
folder
in movies if say you've downloaded a
bunch of videos or
you've created a bunch of videos and you
want a good place to put them
and you don't want to put them in your
documents folder you could put them here
it's up to you you could put them in
these folders
or you could put them in your documents
folder if you think of this like an
apartment
your movies folder could be saved like
your kitchen and videos could be like
food it kind of makes sense to put the
food in the kitchen
but nobody's going to stop you if you
want to put say a bag of chips in the
living room
instead of in the kitchen now you may
also see a public folder and a public
folder is a folder
that not only you can access but other
users on your mac can access as well
so most of us may not use this but if
you do put something in here
a second user could actually see that
file and the dropbox folder in there
somebody can actually put something in
that file it's only people on your
computer that can access these
there's also the downloads folder the
downloads folder is a default place
for apps like safari and other browsers
and mail
to save files other apps that you get
that download files may also use the
downloads folder at the default location
there's nothing to prevent you from
downloading a file and saving it to your
documents folder for instance
the downloads folder is just a
convenient location for those things to
go a lot of times
we download something and only need it
temporarily like an installer for an app
you run the installer installs the app
and now you want to get rid of the
installer
so it's just sitting there in your
downloads folder a convenient place for
you to then go to
find it and delete it other times we may
download
say an image and just want to view it
but we don't necessarily want to store
it anywhere
it goes to the downloads folder
temporarily we can then move it to our
documents folder move it to the pictures
folder
or throw it away now another location
for your files
would be icloud drive if you're using
icloud drive you can do go
and then choose icloud drive and this
looks like a completely
separate location where you have various
folders for things
so for instance there may be apps that
create folders for
convenient storage for things like a
pages or numbers folder
and you may also see a desktop and
documents folder in here in fact
if you go to system preferences and then
your apple id and then icloud icloud
drive
options and turn on desktops and
documents folders
now you'll find in your home folder the
desktop and documents folders aren't
there anymore they've now moved to
icloud you still use them for the same
things
and if i choose go and then icloud drive
i can see here's my desktop folder my
documents folder they work the same way
they're just located in icloud now which
means that i'll be able to see the same
desktop and documents folders on all of
my devices
now one folder i haven't mentioned is
your home library folder
you don't see it here in your home
folder you don't see a library folder
but if you choose go and then hold the
option key down
library appears and i can select it and
now you can see it was there
it was just hidden the library folder in
your home folder is like the system
library folder except it contains
support files for applications
that are specific to you as a user
so for instance in here you'll see
preferences
and these are little preference files
for your applications so for instance if
you've gone into an app and changed one
of the preferences there
that's for you and your user account
somebody else with the user account on
your mac
they would have their own set of
preferences and they would all be stored
in their own library folder in their
home folder and all the other things in
here also pertain to you as a user so
storage for
settings storage for data for different
apps
they're all here in the library folder
the reason it's hidden is because
there's really nothing in here for you
to control
directly the apps themselves are in
charge accessing
and modifying all the things in the
library folder and there's really not
much for a regular user to do
in here that's why it's hidden and one
last thing i want to point out is that
if you're using icloud drive
and you have your desktop and documents
folder stored there
movies music and pictures folders are
still stored locally so for instance
your imovie library here is stored
locally and not on icloud drive which
means it's only available
on this mac and that makes sense for
these folders because movies music and
pictures folders tend to store
large files that are difficult to keep
online they take a long time to upload
long time to download and take up a lot
of space in icloud
so that's one of the reasons you might
want to use these folders to store
large libraries of audio files videos
and images is because they'd be local to
your hard drive and not taking up space
in icloud drive
that's a look at the basic folder
structure on your mac hopefully it gives
you some idea of how your mac
works and how you should store your
[Music]
files
i publish new tutorials every weekday
hit the subscribe button so you don't
miss out then hit the little bell icon
to get notifications for each new
tutorial