Why does a downloaded app (VLC) show as a mounted device in Finder?

It also shows on my desktop.

If I delete it from the desktop, or from the devices list, it goes totally away.

This didn't happen before Yosemite.

Mac mini (Late 2012), OS X Yosemite (10.10)

Posted on Nov 1, 2014 8:00 PM

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3 replies

Nov 1, 2014 9:01 PM in response to Barney-15E

Thank you, Barney. You are on with your experience. :-) I am having a hard time with much of the nomenclature in the Mad world. 'The mounted disk image' I have no idea what that it. I did keep poking around until I saw a window that has the VLC icon and a folder titled 'applications'.. Dragged it over and it asked to replace an existing one.. I did it... Thanks again. I don't see where I can give you credit for correctly answering my question.

Nov 1, 2014 9:18 PM in response to bill299

A disk image is a compressed file that mounts like a hard drive. It would be somewhat similar to viewing the contents of a zip file without extracting the contents.

When you open a disk image, it looks and acts like a hard drive. Apps are distributed on disk images. On some, you copy the app into Applications. Others might have an installer package that you run to install the app.


There should be "buttons" on each reply that allow you to mark a post as helpful or solved. You can only mark a reply with one of those, and you can only mark two posts as helpful and only one as solved.

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Why does a downloaded app (VLC) show as a mounted device in Finder?

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