You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

User profile for user: _bookworm
_bookworm Author
User level: Level 1
8 points

/Macintosh HD/Applications showing my apps but not /Macintosh HD/Users/[account_name]/Applications

Hello,


I'm a little worried. I planned on re-naming my user account and home folder. I got up to re-naming the home folder from a separate user-admin account. But in the end, I stopped and put the folder back to its original name (which is correct) and then deleted the separate user-admin account.


But, now when I log back into my main user-admin account, the file path /Macintosh HD/Applications is showing all of my apps, but the file path /Macintosh HD/Users/[account_name]/Applications is empty, there are no applications in the folder.


Is something wrong? I was able to log in and out of my user account perfectly fine.


Should I just copy all the applications back into the folder?

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 11.2

Posted on Mar 4, 2021 9:14 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply
User profile for user: VikingOSX
VikingOSX
Community+ 2024
User level: Level 10
116,615 points

Posted on Mar 4, 2021 9:21 AM

The local user Applications folder (e.g /Users/username/Applications) is intentionally empty and serves no real purpose because the correct installation location for installed applications (and where they expect to be installed) is in /Applications.


Technically, if you created your own scripts or personal applications, you could place them in your local Applications folder and ensure their location is in your PATH environment variable so these could be found. Personally, I use a /Users/username/bin folder for my scripts and adjust my PATH statement in the Bash (~/.bash_profile), or Zsh (~/.zshrc) dotfiles accordingly:


export PATH=".:$HOME/bin:/usr/local/bin:$PATH"


Now, if I am on the Desktop in Terminal, I can run a script from my local bin directory without having to precede it with a path prefix.

View in context

Similar questions

3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply
User profile for user: VikingOSX
VikingOSX
Community+ 2024
User level: Level 10
116,615 points

Mar 4, 2021 9:21 AM in response to _bookworm

The local user Applications folder (e.g /Users/username/Applications) is intentionally empty and serves no real purpose because the correct installation location for installed applications (and where they expect to be installed) is in /Applications.


Technically, if you created your own scripts or personal applications, you could place them in your local Applications folder and ensure their location is in your PATH environment variable so these could be found. Personally, I use a /Users/username/bin folder for my scripts and adjust my PATH statement in the Bash (~/.bash_profile), or Zsh (~/.zshrc) dotfiles accordingly:


export PATH=".:$HOME/bin:/usr/local/bin:$PATH"


Now, if I am on the Desktop in Terminal, I can run a script from my local bin directory without having to precede it with a path prefix.

Reply

/Macintosh HD/Applications showing my apps but not /Macintosh HD/Users/[account_name]/Applications

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.
Learn more Sign up