Finding your Applications Folder

Introduction: In our next group of videos, we’re going to take a look at working with applications and this video, we’re going to take a look at how it can find our applications. Let’s see how I find our applications on the Mac. Let’s go into my Mac.

Applications Folder: Now, your applications are located in the Applications folder. If you recall, when I talked about the folder hierarchy or the folder structure of the Mac, we had an Applications folder. Let’s take a look at that folder. What I’m going to do is I’m going to go up to go to my menu bar and then I’m going to go to my computer. Then we can see the structure of the Mac again. I select it, and now we are looking at my filing cabinets, my hard drives. What we’re going to do is we’re going to click on the Macintosh HD.

This is the hard drive that my Mac OS Mojave is installed on. This is also where I will find my applications by default. I double click on it, and you’re going to see we have applications here. This is where all of my applications are located. When you install an application, if it has an installer or it’s installed from the app store, it installs it in this folder. If you install an application manually, which I’ll talk about in this group of videos, what you want to do is you want to install it in this folder in the Applications folder. When I double click on this, we can see all my applications. Let’s take a look at this in a list. I click on the list icon here, and now I can see them all in a list.

Users Applications Folder: Now, let’s go back over to my folder, my hard drive. How do we do that? We go up to applications here, I hold down the command key if you recall and then go back. I’m going to go to my Macintosh HD. You’re also going to see when we go to my users here, Mac OS Mojave, I have another Applications folder. This Applications folder is for applications that you only want to have this user have access to. If I want to install an application that only Mac iOS Mojave, the user Mac OS Mojave can use, then install it in this Applications folder. Very rarely do people use this. There are certain instances where you want to have an application here, but I would dare say 99% of the time you’re going to do is you’re going to install it in the Applications folder. The only reason you want to install it in applications for the user is that you want one user to use it. In most cases, though, if you install another user, you’ll want that other user to have access to all of your applications, the only way they can do that is if you install it in the main applications folder. That’s why we have two different Applications folders.

Finding the Applications Folder: Now, let’s take a look at how it can easily find this application’s folder. I’m going to close this window. One way is through the Goldman. As long as I’m in the Finder here and if I’m not in the Finder, all you have to do is click on the desktop, and then you’ll be in the Finder. Then what you do is go up to Go, and you’re going to see we have applications. That’s one way I click on this, and I’m in my applications folder.

Accessing the Applications Folder through Go in the Menu Bar: We go up to Go in the menu bar. We can also access our applications from the sidebar in a doc by default. Again, I’m going to close this window command W, and now I’m going to go and open up a new finder window. It opens up by default to your recent files. I want to go to my applications folder. Well, by default, you’re going to see we have applications in here. I click on this, and I’m looking at all of my applications.

Launchpad: We can also access our applications from the app launchpad. This is going to look very familiar to you if you’re used to iOS, such as the iPhone or the iPad. In My Doc on the left side, we have this little rocket, this icon with the rocket. This is our launchpad. When I click on this, I can see all of my applications. You’re going to see we have these series of dots here, which means I can swipe to find my application I want to open. I can also go up to the very top here and search. Click in here and start typing, and I can search for an app in the launchpad. I click on any one of these to open it up. To get back, I can click outside here, or what I can do is I can use the escape key. It can also find apps from our launchpad. I’ll have a separate lesson on the launchpad.

Opening an Application from the Dock: Now, what I’ve done in an earlier lesson is I added my applications to My Doc, which means I can go over to My Doc here on the right side, I have my applications. This is traditionally how I access my applications. If you’re coming from windows, you can almost think of this as a start bar. When I click on this, I have access to all my apps. Now, this is not installed by default. Remember, I installed this myself. How did I install it? Well, I went and found my Applications folder. I’m going to go up to Go again, and then I went over to applications, and then all I did was drag this icon here onto My Doc. Then, it installed all of my applications or gave me easy access to my applications in the Doc. Again, this is not there by default. I like to think of it as the start bar for the Mac.

Those are the different ways we can find our applications folder on the Mac.