Copy the location of a File or Folder as Pathname

In this video, we’re going to look at how we can copy the pathname of a file or folder on the Mac. Let’s go to my Mac.

Let’s open up a new Finder window. When we’re looking at, I’m going to open up my iCloud Drive here; when we’re looking at my folders here, these folders have a specific path. Let’s take a look at my Documents folder here. Basically, when I open up this Documents folder, within it, we have a couple of more folders. When I open up my Work folder, I have another folder, WIP, work In Process. When I open up that folder, I can see all of my Documents. This is the path; these documents are located in my Work In Process, which is located in my Work, which is located in my Documents, which is located in iCloud Drive. That’s the path of these specific files.

To view that path, what we need to do is go up under View in the menu bar and go down to Show Path Bar. When I select this, we have a little path bar located at the bottom of every Finder window. So now watch what happens when I click on Travel Brochure, I click on it. You’re going to see that my Travel Brochure is located within my Work In Process, which is located within my Work folder, which is located within my Documents folder, which is in my iCloud Drive. So we can see the pathname or the path that that document follows.

Well, in addition to viewing that path, we can also copy this. Maybe you want to put it into a document. To copy a pathname, all you have to do is go over to what you want to copy. I want to copy the pathname to my Travel Brochure. So I go over to Travel Brochure here; I control-click, hold down the control key and click. We have a menu that pops up. One of our options is Copy Travel Brochures pathname. When I select this, it just copied that complete path.

So now, let’s paste this into a new document. I’m going to go down to my Notes here. Let’s go and create a new note. Now, when I paste in here, you’re going to see that complete path. I have my Travel Brochure, which is located in my Work In Process, which is located in my Work, and then it’s located in my Documents folder. So it copied that complete path. If I want to copy the path of this folder here, what I would do is I would control-click on the folder, and then I copy Work as the pathname. Now it’s only going to copy the first few parts of this path. It will not include my travel brochure.

So that’s how we can copy the pathname of a file or folder on the Mac. The first thing we need to do is show the path bar. This is going to be located at the bottom of every Finder window. We just go up under View our in the Finder and select Show Path Bar. From there, you’re going to see the path to anything that you have selected. Just point your cursor over top of what you want to copy, control-click, hold down the control key and click, and from there, you’re going to be able to copy that path name.

So that’s how we can copy the pathname of a file or folder on the Mac.