sharing
Sharing files and folders on Mac somehow confuses me. There are Public Folder, Drop Boxes and Shared Folder. What confuses me is the following:
Which one of the above to use when sharing folders between multiple users on the same Mac?
Is sharing folders using any of the above makes it available to whoever on the same network?
How to share folders and files between users and not network?
This sounds like a job for AirDrop!
You should be able to discover the Macs in your surroundings and then you can simply drag and drop the files.
The default permissions for newly created (/copied) items allow read and write access only to the owner (whoever created it), read-only access to everyone else. The best way around this is to create an access control entry on the folder, and set it to be inherited to items created in (/copied into) it. 'Course, the Finder doesn't give you access to the inheritance controls, so you have to go to the command line:
chmod +a "group:staff allow list,add_file,search,delete,add_subdirectory,delete_child,readattr,writeattr,readextattr,writeextattr,readsecurity,writesecurity,chown,file_inherit,directory_inherit" ~/Public
Note that this gives read & write access to all accounts in the staff group (which basically means all user accounts); if you want a bit more control, create a group in System Preferences > Users & Groups, and add just yourself and your friend's account to it, then use "group:yourgroupname" in the above command. Also, the inheritance only applies to items as they're created, so it won't apply to files and folders already in your Public folder; if you want it to apply to existing items, add chmod's -R option (chmod -R +a ...)
Best Answer
There's an Apple support page that explains these three folders. These folders are for sharing files with users of the same Mac, and by default are not used for transferring files through the network.
Sharedfolder is located in/Users.Publicfolder is in your home folder. Each user has one by default.Drop Boxfolder is in yourPublicfolder.The
SharedandPublicfolders can be read by anyone, regardless of administrator access. However, only the owner of a file (i.e. the user who put it there) can modify or remove it.The
Drop Boxfolder is used to share items with another user, and not every user on the Mac. Anyone can put items in the folder by dragging and dropping it into the user'sDrop Box. However, only the user that owns the folder can open and read what's inside the folder.If you want to allow any user on the Mac to have access to these files, use the
Sharedfolder or yourPublicfolder. If you want to share a file with a limited amount of user(s), put the file in theirDrop Boxfolder(s) located in theirPublicfolder(s).