Application folder does not display applications installed on external hard drive

If you mean the /Applications folder, it is not a Smart Folder. It is actually two folders combined, but neither "gathers" all available applications from everywhere. It acts just as any other normal folder showing what is inside the folder, nothing else.

Do they show in Spotlight? After activating Spotlight, type cmd-1 to see Applications. That should show the apps on the external as long as the external is indexed.

jcesteves74 wrote:

In cas it's wrong, could I have this working using symbolic links I would manually add to the /Applications directory ?

Adding aliases or symlinks to these applications to the /Applications folder should work just fine.

You should contact Apple Support.

I think you’ll need an alias not a Sim link cause I don’t think Sim links work across file system boundaries. That article seems to indicate it should show up in the Applications folder which I can see, possibly working the way they merge the two applications folders already.

When you installed the app, did it create a applications folder on the external drive or any other kind of organization?

jcesteves74 wrote:

As it's written here : Télécharger et installer les apps volumineuses sur un disque distinct - Assistance Apple (FR), applications downloaded on an external disk are available from applications folder. Application folder does not mean the /Applications folder on disk, but the Applications pane in Finder.

I think it shall work using symlinks, but I don't understand why it doesn't create it on my machine.

I don't have any large apps to test this with. But I'm pretty sure that's just flat out wrong.