Where Is the Download Folder on My Mac UPDATED Free
Where Is the Download Folder on My Mac
Whenever you lot download something on your Mac, it goes into 1 place by default — the Downloads binder. Normally yous download files from your web browser, merely other apps also use Downloads equally a repository for files transferred to your Mac. Today we await at managing the Mac Downloads folder and keep it from taking up a lot of storage on your calculator.
Where is the Mac Downloads folder?
The Downloads binder is attainable from two places: the Dock, where it may announced as a "pile" of files or every bit a folder (epitome above), and in the Dwelling folder.
The Home binder contains a lot of things: Movies, Music, and Pictures, first and foremost. For those who don't employ iCloud Drive, Desktop and Documents folders are too in the Dwelling folder. Home is the location for many folders and files for your user business relationship. It's besides where the Downloads folder lives.
How files are saved to the Mac Downloads binder
As mentioned in this article's opening paragraph, anything downloaded in a web browser goes into the Downloads folder by default. As an case, allow's say that you want to transport a friend a picture of the awesome OWC Envoy Pro Elektron you lot just bought. On the website, yous see a perfect picture to send, and so you right-click the image (a 2-finger click on a trackpad) and run into this pop-up card:
Select "Salvage Image to 'Downloads'", and the image is downloaded to the Downloads folder.
Other times you may be downloading an app or commuter from a software developer, and you see a Download push. Click information technology, and you'll see an animation showing the file zipping from the website to your computer. When the file download is complete, the Downloads folder (or stack) in the Dock bounces to indicate that the file has arrived.
When receiving an email with attachments in the Mail service app, click the paperclip button that appears when you hover over the summit middle of an email message (run into image below). Past default, the attachments are saved to — you guessed information technology — the Downloads folder.
Why you should manage your Downloads folder
It'due south very piece of cake to download apps, documents, PDFs, photos, installers, and other media to your Mac. If you don't picket it, your Downloads binder of a sudden has hundreds or thousands of files in information technology. Don't believe me? Every day I download dozens of files for articles that I'g writing, and within weeks I'll take hundreds of files. I finally decided that I needed to do something near that mess!
Back when I was a Certified Apple Consultant, I had a client who was complaining about non having enough storage space on his Mac. A quick look showed that the customer wasn't aware of the Downloads binder for some reason and had well over 110GB of files stored there. We moved some of them to another folder, simply the majority were deleted. Trouble solved.
The easiest way I personally found to handle all of those files was to effigy out what I wanted to do with them every bit soon every bit they were downloaded.
How to manage downloaded files
That installer package (.pkg) or disk image (.dmg) file? Install the app, then delete the installer! If you need the app once again at a future date, information technology'southward e'er available for download from the original source.
Images
Images? The chances are that you lot downloaded an image for a reason — perhaps you needed information technology for an email or a document you're writing, Open up the Downloads folder by right-clicking the binder icon and selecting Open Downloads.
To view a downloaded image, merely highlight it with a click and press the space bar on the keyboard to open it in Quick Wait. Demand to edit the image? Double-click most any JPG, PNG, HEIC, or similar epitome file and information technology opens past default in Preview. Right-clicking provides other options for editing an image through the Open With control. Information technology shows all apps that tin open and edit a file of that blazon.
One time it is in your certificate or email, dump it into the Mac trash. My motto? "Use it, then lose it!"
Irresolute the default download folder
Downloading a lot of images? Why not save them right into your Photos folder or a project binder? You lot tin can alter the default download folder to any other folder on your Mac.
This is quite piece of cake to do. In your browser (Safari as an example), select Safari > Preferences. In the General tab, click the dropdown menu side by side to "File download location" (meet image beneath).
To have Safari ask you each time for a location for saving downloaded files, select "Ask for each download". how do things finish up in your Downloads folder? Want to save all those images into the Photos folder? Click on "Other…" and select the Photos folder or a subfolder within it.
Moving files to an iCloud Drive folder
Desire to move some of your downloaded files to a folder on your iCloud Drive so they're available on all devices? Just open the Downloads folder, click on the file you want to move, and elevate it to the proper folder.
macOS has what are called " spring-loaded folders " that make it very to merely drag files from one place to another. The link here provides detailed directions on how leap-loaded folders work. This video besides demonstrates what I'm talking virtually:
Keep it clean
The point of this post is that it'south very easy to accrue a lot of files in the Mac Downloads binder and chew up valuable storage on your Mac. Delete files from Downloads once they're used, or move them to an iCloud folder if y'all desire to proceed them.
The elementary instructions outlined here are a skilful pace at keeping the Downloads folder clean.
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Where Is the Download Folder on My Mac UPDATED Free
Posted by: thelmaondowde.blogspot.com
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