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Level 1

4 points

Applications folder empty in finder

I updated to Catalina 10.15.6 on August 9, with updates 8/25 (supplemental) and 10/4 (10.15.7)

That may or may not be related to the situation that the Applications folder under my username is now empty. In fact, I wonder whether accidentally turning on Dropbox Sync had unexpected effect (it is now off).

In addition to wanting to know how this happened, I want to know how to restore normal access to my applications from Finder.

I look forward to help from the larger community!

MacBook Pro 15”, macOS 10.14

Posted on Oct 28, 2020 6:36 PM

Best reply

John Galt

Level 10

141,646 points

Posted on Oct 28, 2020 6:44 PM

Technically there is nothing wrong with having an Applications folder in your Home folder, but that's not where it usually resides. Normally that folder resides at the root level of a Mac's startup disk, as in /Applications. That way, it is accessible to all users of that Mac (and also requires Admin privileges to modify). You can create whatever folders you want within Home, so its structure can be as organized or as disorganized as you wish.

To navigate to the correct Applications folder choose Go > Applications from the Finder.

If you created an Applications folder in Home, as in ~/Applications, it is not as protected from alteration and apps such as Dropbox may have affected it.

I don't use Dropbox so that's just speculation though.

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Applications folder empty in finder

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