#Add to path osx full

Being a text-based tool itself, Terminal will quickly output the specified file path as text, which can be selected and copied. The OS X Terminal is one program that can handle file paths via drag-and-drop as text, instead of trying to manage their contents. While generally intended to be a quick view of file information, the text content in the information window can be selected by clicking and dragging or by double- and triple-clicking, so you can use these approaches to select the file path and copy it from this window.ĭrag a file or folder to the Terminal window to instantly reveal its path. Select the item and press Command-I to open the information window for it, and then locate the path in the General section next to the keyword 'Where.'

#Add to path osx full

The first option is to use the information window for the item, which will show you the full path to it up to its parent folder. To copy the file path of a file or folder as a text string that you can paste into another document, there are several approaches you can take: You can select the path to the file's parent folder in an info window and copy it.

However, these approaches do not give you the option to copy the file path as text. If you would like to instead just get the file path of the selected document, you can use the Finder's 'Show Path Bar' option in the View menu, open the document in a program and use the path menu, or by searching for the item in Spotlight followed by holding the Option and Command keys while hovering your mouse over a search result to reveal its path in the preview window. The same goes for dragging and dropping files from the Finder they similarly may be handled either as file names or as icon or content objects. In some cases the program will only paste the file name, but in others it may try to embed the file's contents or its icon where you have pasted. Sometimes you may wish to get the full path of an item in the Finder, and while there are several ways to access file paths, not all will allow you to extract them as text to paste into documents you may be composing.įor example, if you select a file in the Finder and press Command-C to copy it, the behavior when pasting it will be different, depending on the program being used.