Understanding your Home (User) folder - macOS Tutorial

- [Instructor] Previously, we looked at the important concept of folders and files and how this organizational system is used by you and your operating system to manage all the contents of your hard drive. Now, it's important to note that many of the folders and files on your computer are not there for your use. They're there in order for the operating system to run properly. In some cases, these files and folders are protected by the operating system, so you'll be unable to move, rename, delete, or sometimes even see them. There are files and folders you can move around if you know what you're doing, but can also potentially damage your system if you don't. That's why your personal account on your Mac includes a Home folder. Let's take a look at how to get to the Home folder before we learn what it is. Currently, I don't have any windows open or any applications running. I'm looking at the Mac Finder. You can see the word Finder here in the upper left-hand corner. The current application's name is always displayed here in the menu bar, and the Finder is basically the application you use to interact with your operating system. So to open my Home folder, I can do a number of different things. I'm going to collect the Go menu, and here I can select Home. Notice there's a keyboard shortcut listed here. If you like shortcuts, you can press the Command, which is the Apple button on your keyboard, Shift, and H altogether to open up your Home folder. I'll just select it from the menu now. So the Home folder is your folder. It's where you can store all of your documents, music, photos, videos, and so on. Now, you can store files on other parts of your hard drive, but there are very few reasons to do that. It's best to keep all of your personal files here in your Home folder, so they're all in one central location. You're also free to create additional folders in your home folder or within any of these other default folders as your needs require. Even your Mac uses your Home folder to manage the files related to you and the content you store or create with other Apple applications. For example, the Music folder contains the music that you listen to in the Music app. I'll click the Back button here. The Pictures folder contains the pictures you manage in the Photos app. The Movies folder contains your iMovie projects and so on. So that's your Home folder. Anytime you're using an application and you want to save a file, for example, if you're writing a paper and want to save it, you should navigate to your Home folder and save it, for example, in your Documents folder. Or you might want to create a folder nested within the Documents folder. We'll talk about how to save and open files in the next chapter. For now, I just want you to know that this is where you should be storing your stuff on your Mac. Now, I also want to offer the suggestion of adding your Home folder to your Dock. The Dock is the item at the bottom of the screen containing the icons for various applications, which you can click to open them or make them the active application. Now notice we have a couple dividing lines here in the Dock. The items to the left of this first line are applications. The items here are recently opened applications. So even if you didn't deliberately put their icons in the Dock, they'll show up here. But again, you can customize the Dock with your own applications and folders. Now, since you probably want to access your Home folder quite frequently, it makes sense to add it to your Dock so you can always get to it from here, instead of having to click the Finder icon and then choose Go, Home from the menu like we just did. Now, to add that folder to the Dock, we first have to find it. Now, I already have my Home folder open, but let's take a look at where it's actually located. I'm going to close this window by clicking the red close button. Now, if you have difficulty with colors, the Close button is always the far left button, and you can see this X appear in it when I roll my mouse over it. Now, to get to the Home folder for this example, I'm going to choose Go, Computer. And the Computer window shows you all the hard drives attached to your Mac. Unless you change the name, the main hard drive, the one containing your operating system, should be called Macintosh HD. I'll open it by double-clicking it. And for the most part, everything you've seen here was created by and for your operating system. The only folder you'll probably interact with here, unless you're a more advanced user, is the Applications folder, which contains the programs installed on your Mac. I can show you its contents by double-clicking to open it. So there are my applications. I'll click the back button to go back one step. Now, you definitely don't want to mess around with the library or the system folder if you don't know what you're doing. The other folder in here is Users. This is where you'll find the Home folder of every user with an account on your Mac. macOS is a multi-user system, meaning each member of your household, office, or organization can have their own account on this single Mac. Each user's Home folder and account is protected by their own password, so your files can't intermingle with each other's. Notice I can double-click my own Home folder, and you can always tell which one is yours because your name is on it and its icon is a house. In fact, I'll switch this over to Icon so we can see that a little bit better. So I can get into my own Home folder, but if I click the Back button and try to open this Producer folder, notice each folder in here has a little no-entry kind of symbol on it. And if I try to open one, I get this message saying I don't have permission to see its contents. So only you or someone with your password can get to the stuff in your Home folder, which is another reason to keep your things in here instead of having some... which is another reason to keep your things in here instead of somewhere else on your hard drive. All right, let's go back to my Home folder again. So to add my Home folder to the Dock, I just drag its icon to the right side of the right separator line here on the Dock. Notice the Dock makes room for it, and there it is. Now, I'll just close this window. And now, anytime I need to get to my Home folder, I can just click its icon in the Dock and this menu opens up showing me its contents. Now, I can either browse through here and select the file or folder I want to open, or I can click Open in Finder, which opens up my Home folder in a window like this again. All right, so that's the Home folder in macOS. Again, I highly recommend that you store and organize all your personal files and other media in your Home folder.