You can move Mac OS X Lion files and folders around within a window to your heart’s content as long as that window is set to icon view. Just click and drag any file’s icon to its new location in the window.
Find Folders On Mac
- Apr 23, 2020.
- Although the default file download destination is the Downloads folder, it can be changed on your browser. For instance, on Safari, this is how you do it: Open Safari Preferences General. Under File Download Location, select a different folder where you want to save your entire Safari downloads.
Apr 30, 2016. Jul 24, 2016. Jul 04, 2020.
Create A Folder On Mac
You can’t move icons around in a Mac OS X Lion window that is displayed in list, column, or Cover Flow view. Well, you can move them to put them in a different folder in list, column, or Cover Flow view, but that’s not moving them around, really.
As you might expect from Apple, you have choices for how you move one file or folder into another folder. You can use these techniques to move any icon (folder, document, alias, or program icon) into folders or onto other disks.
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Drag an icon onto a folder icon. Drag the icon for one folder (or file) onto the icon for another folder (or disk) and then release when the second icon is highlighted. The first folder is inside the second folder. Put another way, the first folder is a subfolder of the second folder.This technique works regardless of whether the second folder’s window is open.
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Drag an icon into an open folder’s window. Drag the icon for one folder (or file) into the open window for a second folder (or disk).
If you want to move an item from one disk to another disk, you can’t use the preceding tricks. Your item is copied, not moved. If you want to move a file or folder from one disk to another, you have to hold down the Command key when you drag an icon from one disk to another. The little Copying Files window even changes to read Moving Files.
iCloud Drive is a space saver and handy tool to keep storage on your MacBook optimised. It automatically manages space without removing the files and folders, so you can still access them seamlessly without having to download them manually first. While moving Desktop and Document folders is a breeze, other system related folders – like Downloads – are met with an error message.
If you are just moving any folder you created, simply drag and drop, remove the original and create an alias to the new one in the original location. This guide is mostly relevant for system folders that other programs may rely on.
For example, I like to keep my temporary files in the Downloads folder which has the habit of growing to quite a large size. Keeping it on iCloud Drive, which just doubled my storage to 2TB for the same cost makes sense and is a handy way to free up space. Here’s a quick guide on how to move it:
- Simply drag and drop your downloads folder to iCloud drive, which will upload the files in the background so you can get on with things
- Trying to remove the Downloads folder to replace it with an alias (link) to the new location results in an error message, so here’s the workaround:
- Open the Terminal.app (you can use Spotlight search if you don’t have a shortcut in your dock by hitting cmd+space and typing Terminal)
- Drag the Downloads folder from its new location in iCloud Drive to the Terminal window, which automatically changes you into the right directory
- Type in “pwd” to note the path to the Downloads folder in the iCloud Drive, which is not easy to ascertain otherwise
- Open a new Terminal window by pressing cmd+N and type in the following (or copy and paste):
- Enter the password you use to log into your Mac and press OK to remove the old Downloads folder
- Now type in the following command to link the Downloads folder from iCloud Drive to your home folder: sudo
The key thing to note here is that when you copy and paste the location from step 5 (pwd) earlier that you need to add a backslash to the end of Mobile like in my example above. Also, you need to replace <YOUR USERNAME> with whatever the name of your home folder happens to be, which is usually your username. Your path may be totally different, so check it against the output from step 5 (pwd).
Caveat emptor: Your mileage may vary, let me know on Twitter or by posting a comment.