How to Find out Large Files on Mac OS X By Lois Green, Wednesday, April 19, 2017 One of the most effective ways to free up space on Mac OS X is to find out large files and delete them.
In Terminal, how do I go from Macintosh HD to places such as johnsmith that contains Downloads, Desktop etc. In a Finder window, it seems they are independent of each other. From Macintosh HD, I see Library, Applications etc.
But under User I couldn't find johnsmith. The Mac file tree is rather confusing for a Windows user like me who are used to 'My Computer' then all files are managed by root drives and folders. What is consider as root on my Mac? Is it Macintosh HD or johnsmith? It is possible to do a partition on Mac like that on Windoes?
You can find the location to your home directory by looking in the 'Users & Groups' System Preference pane. Open 'System Preferences' application. Click 'Users & Groups'. Click the padlock to unlock it, if it is not already unlocked.
Enter user name and password for an Admin user. Right click on the User name you want to find the home directory for, select 'Advanced Options.' .
![Folders Folders](https://cms-images-mw.idgesg.net/images/features/graphics/132817-finderwin_med.jpg)
Observe the path as noted next to 'Home directory:' Now, once you see where OS X thinks your home folder is located then you can work on un hiding it if it is not showing up where it is suppose to be. Make sure its name does not start with '.' , Additionally you can use the SetFile -a v /pathToHome command to make it visible if it appears to be hidden for no apparent reason. OS X is Unix-based so there is only one big filesystem visible to the user, even if it is distributed across several partions.
This also applies to external drives which are accessible under /Volumes/NAME-OF-DRIVE. The individual user home folders (which contain all the nice stuff like Downloads, Documents etc.) are available in /Users, each user has his/her own directory there with a name matching their short name. Type ls -l /Users in Terminal to see all of them. And to actually 'go' there, enter cd johnsmith (for user johnsmith) or just cd (for your own home folder), followed by ls -l to see the content.
The Preview pane is available in all views by choosing View Show Preview from the menu bar. Or press Shift-Command (⌘)-P to quickly show or hide the Preview pane. Enhances the Preview pane in several ways:. More information, including detailed metadata, can be shown for each file. This is particularly useful when working with photos and media, because key EXIF data, like camera model and aperture value, are easy to locate. Choose View Preview Options to control what information the Preview pane can show for the kind of file selected.
![Search Search](http://cdn5.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/create-smart-search-aka-saved-search-folder-on-mac-os-x.png)
Quick Actions let you easily manage or edit the selected file. With Quick Actions in, you can take actions on a file without opening an app. Quick Actions appear at the bottom of the and vary depending on the kind of file selected.
Rotate an image. Mark up an image or PDF. Combine images and PDFs into a single PDF file.
Trim audio and video files To manage Quick Actions, click More, then choose Customize. MacOS Mojave includes a standard set of Quick Actions, but Quick Actions installed by third-party apps also appear here. You can even create your own Quick Actions using.