Inside Wire: home directory folders

Posted by Jeff Graber May 2, 2004 at 11:15pm

(Jeff Graber is CEO of JUMP, a Mac consulting-support company. Since 1996, he’s led the company to consult and support over 17,000 Macintosh computers for business clients. Graber’s “Inside Wire” column will appear each Monday.)

You will notice that your Mac OS X home directory contains a number of folders with special icons. These folders are used by many applications as default locations for saving files. Each folder’s name describes the types of files it is designed to store. You can actually store any type of file in any of the folders; their names are just a convenient way to keep your files organized.

Desktop. This folder contains the contents of all the files and folders currently displayed on your desktop. If you place this folder in your Dock, you can view the contents of your desktop without closing our application windows especially handy if you have a lot of files on the desktop.

Documents. This is a place to store files such as letters, financial documents, spreadsheets, and so on. Library. This special folder holds your application preferences, resources, sounds and other files needed by applications and the system to create your individual desktop experience. For example, your browser bookmarks are kept here. Movies. Use this folder to store your movie files. This is the default location that iMovie uses to store your movies. Music. Use this folder to store your digital pictures. This is the default location that iPhoto uses to store your photos. Public. This special folder is also available to other users of the system. If you enable Personal File Sharing, files placed in this folder are available to everyone, so don’t store sensitive information here. In the Public folder is a folder called Drop Box. Other users can put files into the Drop Box, but they can’t open it. As the owner of your Drop Box, you can open it to retrieve its contents. This is a way for other users to give you files that are intended only for you to view. Sites. This folder is open to all users and is used if you want to host a Web page on your system. Dont store sensitive information in this folder.

So why are there so many Library folders? Because Mac OS X is a multi-user operating system. The libraries and their contents are hierarchical; the settings of the lower-level folders can override or add to the settings in the higher-level folders. For example, each Library folder contains a Fonts folder. You can use specific fonts depending on which Library/Fonts folder the fonts are put in.

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