I am logged in as user "vlado" on my MacBook running El Capitan. If I go and type whoami in Terminal, it says vlado too. So this is fine. But in my folder structure in hd/Users/vlado/Applications I don't see my Applications, which I can otherwise see through Finder. I have my applications no problem and I run them no problem, but the folder structure is confusing me. Shouldn't the applications go into my user's (vlado's) folder structure and not to hd/Applications?
MacOS – Basic OS X folders – folder structure regarding users
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Related Solutions
You can find the location to your home directory by looking in the "Users & Groups" System Preference pane.
- Open "System Preferences" application
- Click "Users & Groups"
- Click the padlock to unlock it, if it is not already unlocked. Enter user name and password for an Admin user.
- Right click on the User name you want to find the home directory for, select "Advanced Options..."
- Observe the path as noted next to "Home directory:"
Now, once you see where OS X thinks your home folder is located then you can work on un hiding it if it is not showing up where it is suppose to be.
Make sure its name does not start with ".", Additionally you can use the SetFile -a v /pathToHome command to make it visible if it appears to be hidden for no apparent reason.
That’s not the recommended way of configuring a two-disk OS X install. Steps:
- Make a clean install on the SSD. Or you can just copy over the System Files. This would make steps 2 and 3 unnecessary.
- Create a temporary admin account on the SSD.
- Add a new account in the Users and Accounts preferences. It should match the credentials of your old account on the HDD.
- Right click on the account after it has been created, then click on Advanced Options.
- Set the home folder of this account as the previous home folder on your HDD.
- Transfer the necessary apps, libraries, etc by using a disk cloning app or good old copy-pasting.
The Download folder reappears because OS X thinks that the home directory is on the SSD, not on the HDD.
Source: http://macintoshhowto.com/hardware/how-to-speed-up-your-mac-with-a-ssd-drive.html
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Best Answer
Just a quick answer....
Items in the
Applicationsare system wide, not per user. You can deny Users access to particular applications, but in general they are available to everyone.The
Userfolder holds items that are specific to each user and only available to each user individually and the superuser (root).Macworld has a good article that goes into this further
Also, OS X Daily had a nice summary table of the folder structure which should be helpful: