I'm syncing some local folders so they appear as albums "From my Mac" in my iPhone Photos app. It works, but the ordering is wrong. The files in the local folders are actually symlinks into nested folders on a backup drive (actually a Photos.app library) so the paths are mapped like this example: ~/Pictures/example/A75BB473-E7A7-4B52-A184-6BB6D60AFA41.jpeg -> /Volumes/drive/example.photoslibrary/originals/A/A75BB473-E7A7-4B52-A184-6BB6D60AFA41.jpeg Note that I am syncing **folders** not albums, and this is for good reason. Syncing albums is [broken](https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/372176/why-wont-photos-import-from-iphone-after-upgrade) for photo libraries on network drives. The photos import no problem, but the order is weird. I can't align it with any ordering I can replicate in the finder. They are *roughly* time ordered based on the EXIF "Date Time Original" tag, but not quite. On the iPhone clicking a photo shows the correct date from the EXIF data, but this is seemingly not being used for ordering. Neither is the file name. The created, modified and access timestamps on the original photos are all the same, so this doesn't seem the principle ordering value either. How does the iPhone sync process determine the order these appear in the album? What can I do to ensure correct time ordering?

What command is used to create a symbolic link/soft link?

I am connecting to a home storage server via SMB. I suspect that Apple's smbfs automatically adds an "mfsymlink" option when mounting server volumes. Is there a way to have it _not_ add that options? My home server uses a FreeBSD OS and a Posix-compatible ZFS file system. I now connect to it via SMB, because AFP server access became unavailable when I upgraded my Mac to macOS Monterey. Now when I create a symbolic link on the SMB share's file system, using my macOS client, what gets written on the file server is a 1067-byte text file known as a "Minshall+French symlink". What I used to get, when connecting via AFP or NFS, is that a Posix symlink was written to the FreeBSD server's Posix filesystem. I would like to get that behaviour using the Apple SMB service in macOS Monterey 14.7.2. How can I accomplish that?

I am trying to set a symlink so that I can point the

command in Terminal to a new install of python3. I last did this in Mojave, where one could disable csrutil and then run the following command before re-enabling:

ln -s /usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/python

Now I am trying to do the same in MacOS Ventura 13.1, and I am met with the error feedback:

: /usr/bin/python: Read-only file system

What is this new roadblock that "MacOSimandius, destroyer of worlds" throws in my path? And more importantly (please): **How do I set my symlink?** It must still be possible. This is still unix, is it not?

Please provide some solid MacOS examples of hard link vs soft link in ln -s vs link? Is a hard link basically just a copy, whereas a soft link links to the original source? Very confused.

There's a symlink in my root directory called u. It points to Users. It looks like it's being created at boot time, but idk if that means anything. I don't remember this being part of a normal macOS install. I don't have access to any other macOS systems, so I can't compare. I'm running Ventura 13.6.6 (22G630) on a 16-inch, 2019 MBP. Last clean install was Monterey 12.0.1 in October 2021.

❯ ls -l /u
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  5 Apr 12 15:10 /u -> Users

❯ GetFileInfo -P /u
file: "/u"
type: "slnk"
creator: "rhap"
attributes: Avbstclinmedz
created: 04/12/2024 15:10:07
modified: 04/12/2024 15:10:07

❯ who -b
         system boot  2024-04-12 15:10

I would like to learn, how to find **broken symbolic links**, recursively given a path. Just as a precise reference of what I am looking for, the Linux equivalent (that does not work in macOS) would be [find -xtype](https://www.gnu.org/software/findutils/manual/html_mono/find.html#index-_002dxtype) : find /path/to/directory -xtype l

I've learnt about aliases and symbolic links ages ago, but only recently learnt of the link command from https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/323213/symbolic-link-vs-alias Is the link command in terminal on my MacOS - version is Sonoma 14.4.1 the same as ln or is it its own command? I've not actually done this often on terminal, but I did: touch test1.txt then edited it in a text editor with the content "Test" and then in terminal: link test1.txt test2.txt When would the link command be useful on MacOS as compared to symbolic link and alias? If you could explain - much appreciated!

I am running MacOS 10.14.5. I used symbolic links a lot to free up my internal drive. My internal drive is almost full and I need to free up some spaces again. Normally, the symbolic links solution work very well even for many apps. But there is one app which can not recognize the symbolic link I created. So I am wondering how to workaround this issue? I have to move this app's library directory to external ssd drive, it uses 50% of my internal drive. Btw, the path I plan to move is at ~/Library/Containers/xxxx. Thanks a lot. PS: I am wondering if I can create a .sparseimage file and then put it at external drive. And add it somehow to /etc/fstab to mount it at a specific location. Not sure if this will work. I am checking this way now.

Does anyone know of a definitive modern (Ventura-onwards) solution to moving the standard folders in a user directory to a different drive, NOT moving the ~/User directory itself, but moving ~/Documents, ~/Pictures, ~/Downloads etc, but **in such a way that Finder (and open / save dialogues) keeps showing them with the standard "special" Finder sidebar icons, rather than generic folder icons.** Can it be done from a different admin account by replacing the directories with Symlinks or somesuch, or will Finder always know what you've done, and not be fooled by your shenanigans? Edit: The **BOLD** part is the important bit - I'm specifically looking for a solution that keeps the special sidebar icons. That's the only goal of the exercise **Edit again because this is apparently not clear enough**: Please do not suggest *"this may have answered the question"* unless that suggestion **specifically** details that the custom finder sidebar icons - the down arrow in a circle for ~/Downloads, the folded corner sheet of paper for ~/Documents, the camera for ~/Pictures, the filmstrip for ~/Movies, the notes for ~/Music are preserved. I can already move the folders, and the libraries for apps that usually reside within. That's the easy part. **This question is specific to preserving the "special" Finder sidebar icons**.

I'm trying to add python3 to my path by adding a symlink but it's erroring and I'm not sure why. /usr/bin $ sudo su sh-3.2# ln -s /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.7/bin/python3 /usr/bin/python3 ln: /usr/bin/python3: Operation not permitted sh-3.2# whoami root sh-3.2# ls -la | head -n 2 total 139064 drwxr-xr-x 977 root wheel 31264 24 Jul 2018 . *** Edit *** I have symlinked from /usr/local/bin/python3 so that's fine.

The full error message is:

lang-zsh
==> Pouring numpy--1.26.3.arm64_sonoma.bottle.1.tar.gz
Error: The brew link step did not complete successfully
The formula built, but is not symlinked into /opt/homebrew
Could not symlink bin/f2py
Target /opt/homebrew/bin/f2py
already exists. You may want to remove it:
  rm '/opt/homebrew/bin/f2py'

To force the link and overwrite all conflicting files:
  brew link --overwrite numpy

To list all files that would be deleted:
  brew link --overwrite --dry-run numpy

Possible conflicting files are:

followed by a long list of files, most of which are located in /opt/homebrew/lib/python3.11/site-packages/numpy/. I tried executing brew link numpy, but received the error message:

-zsh
Linking /opt/homebrew/Cellar/numpy/1.26.3...
Error: Could not symlink bin/f2py
Target /opt/homebrew/bin/f2py
already exists. You may want to remove it:
  rm '/opt/homebrew/bin/f2py'

To force the link and overwrite all conflicting files:
  brew link --overwrite numpy

To list all files that would be deleted:
  brew link --overwrite --dry-run numpy

I ran brew link --overwrite --dry-run numpy, and Homebrew output the same long list of files as before. Does anyone know if removing all of those files, in the hopes that I can successfully link numpy, would work without causing any problems on my system? I use the numpy library in my development work, so I definitely need it. Edit: Output of ls -laG /opt/homebrew/bin/f2py:

-zsh
-rwxr-xr-x     1 clark  wheel    244 Jan 11 13:15 f2py
-rwxr-xr-x     1 clark  wheel    242 Nov 14 19:14 f2py3
-rwxr-xr-x     1 clark  wheel    242 Nov 14 19:14 f2py3.9

Apparently, f2py and its variants don't point to anything.

I want to add Google Chrome to path under the google-chrome name so that I can execute the following command: google-chrome --version. First I tried with:

sudo ln -s /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome /usr/local/bin/google-chrome

But I kept receiving pop-ups with an error message (Google Chrome quit unexpectedly.). So I tried with --headless, i.e. made a script called /usr/local/bin/google-chrome and put the following there:

#!/bin/bash
/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome "$@" --headless

But I'm getting: ContextResult::kTransientFailure: Failed to send GpuControl.CreateCommandBuffer. Made a bit of googling, tried a solution with --disable-gpu, but it still does not work. Note that /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome --version returns the correct version.

I am looking for a way to accomplish the following on Monterey (12.6): In the past I would symlink some Mac OS system folders (Documents, Downloads and Desktop) to folders already synced to a Synology NAS and have the "links" act like the "original Mac OS folders. What I want is to have these files exist on the NAS and not on the local storage: Two Macs, same (synced) files in the the local folders. For clarification - my question is not about how to sync stuff with the Syno NAS, it's how to have already synced folders act like the original user folders „Documents“, „Downloads“ and „Desktop“ Actual setup: The „SynologyDriveFolder“ is the permanently synced (remote) folder from the Syno NAS sitting somewhere under ~user/ which is holding the remote folders „Documents“, „Downloads“ and „Desktop“ (via the up and running SynologyDrive service). They should act as the „real“ system folders on each Mac to choose from, especially in the „Save as…“ dialogue and I want to place them in the Finder’s sidebar as „the only“ „Documents“, „Downloads“ and „Desktop“ folders (no issue with saying goodbye to the original Mac OS folder icons for the specific folders) Under Mojave it was super straightforward : Made Symlink of „remote“ folder (in my case ~user/me/SynologyDriveFolder/Documents/), placed Symlink in Macintosh HD/user/me/ and renamed original „Documents“ to something different. Done. From what I learned (and tried but failed on a test install of Monterey), due to (security) changes made in Catalina or so, nowadays it is not as easy as it was. I did some research but did not find a reliable explanation how to set symlinks (resp. firmlinks I stumbled across) on Monterey. Can I substitute a folder on the NAS for a local folder in the user's home folder on macOS Monterey?

I have a tangled mess of python installations on my laptop. I was looking at the executables in /usr/local/bin and they are all symbolic links to ../../../Library...... There's some weird behavior surrounding this. If I do ls -lhaG I see ---> and the relative path to the right of the symlinks: lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 69B Dec 7 22:29 python3 -> ../../../Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.1/bin/python3 However, I can't seem to get any of the command line tools to resolve that path and display the actual path to python3. I've found some tidbits here and there regarding use of pwd -P and the find utility to do this. The problem is that these don't seem to work on OS X the way that people describe them working on linux (i.e. outputting the full path to the symbolic link). They just print the symbolic links path for me: FantasticMrFox:bin robert$ pwd -P python3 /usr/local/bin FantasticMrFox:bin robert$ find pwd -P -name python3 /usr/local/bin/python3 Any ideas on what's going on here?

I have a Visual Studio for Mac project folder that contains an unusual file: The file is only visible with ls -A in the terminal, and its name is ..\..\items.json:

~/Projects/Boss/Boss/bin/Debug % ls -A
..\..\items.json        .DS_Store
~/Projects/Boss/Boss/bin/Debug %

(I understand what the file is, and where it originally came from - so the file name or contents of the file aren't the problem. The fact that it's invisible and its name begins with ..\..\ is the problem.) I want to delete this file. As a first attempt, I moved everything else in the folder to somewhere else and then deleted the folder. Then I re-created the folder and the file was immediately present again! How can I delete it?

I wanna ask if it is possible to **automatically** create relative symbolic links in Mac OS X ? Seems like Linux has -r option for ln to do this: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/10370/make-a-symbolic-link-to-a-relative-pathname . https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/ln.1.html But alas, it is not the option for Mac OS X: https://ss64.com/osx/ln.html I've found here similar question: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16317809/how-to-create-relative-symbolic-link-in-mac-os . but it's about manual relative link calculation instead of automatic like -r option for ln do in Linux. So my question - is there any option in Mac OS X to make relative symlinks automatically instead of absolute ones? My shell is Bash, not zsh, system is macOS 10.15.7 Catalina, if it matters. Thanks in advance! PS: Sorry for my English - it isn't my native language...

How can the directory ~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs be hardlinked to the directory `~/iCloud? The [suggested answer](https://apple.stackexchange.com/q/219549) to this question, based on the following command

gln -d  /Users/mpf/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com\~apple\~CloudDocs iCloud

throws this error on Sonoma 14.0:

gln: failed to create hard link './iCloud' => '/Users/mpf/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs': Operation not permitted

What is the correct approach?

My system drive is tiny and my second is 2TB. Therefore I would like to store the Sonoma Aerial videos on the second drive. If I use shuffle, there's approximately 57gb of them. I presumed that macos would treat a symlinked directory like a regular directory but I'm having trouble with the following: - I move the **4KSDR240FPS** directory (with all videos downloaded) to the second drive. - I create a symlink of the **4KSDR240FPS** directory via: ln -s ... (and confirm it works etc). The problem is that the screensaver system preferences act as if there's no videos in the directory. If I empty the directory and attempt to re-download any of the videos via system preferences, it completes the download symbol but nothing happens. There's no video in the directory and a revisit to system preferences suggests it needs to be downloaded again. - I've tried giving both root and user (who is an admin) permissions to the symlink but it hasn't changed anything. - I've also tried deleting the rest of the files in the com.apple.idleassetsd directory (that parents the **4KSDR240FPS** directory) and let macos rebuild them when I open the system preferences (which it does). But the problem persists. Any ideas on hosting the videos outside of the system disk (other than using third party screen savers that I'm aware of)? _note: I'm using the name 'Aerial' as I've seen the Sonoma system video screensavers referenced as this. I'm aware that there's also a third-party app, of this name, using similar videos for a similar screen saver and I'm not referring to that._ ## Update 1 I deleted the **4KSDR240FPS** symlink and let Aerial recreate the directory by choosing a video from the prefs. It does appear to download it outside of this directory and only moves it into it when the download is complete. If using a symlink, this final move does not happen for me. ## Update 2 I attemped to use the synthetic.conf solution linked to in the answer @chronospoon gave. The following command in terminal: echo -e "Library/Application Support/com.apple.idleassetsd/Customer/4KSDR240FPS\tVolumes/Twotb/Library Annexe/Application Support/com.apple.idleassetsd/Customer/4KSDR240FPS" | sudo tee /etc/synthetic.conf Did create a synthetic.conf file withe above command. I checked it had a tab character and did not have leading slashes. I also made sure the target **4KSDR240FPS** existed (by creating a new, empty dir). Restarting the mac produced no Library/Application Support/com.apple.idleassetsd/Customer/4KSDR240FPS symlink of any kind

When a symlink is created, it gets the icon of the target folder (with the addition of a black arrow in the lower left corner). The issue I am having is that the symlink icon does not update when the icon of the target folder changes. Deleting and recreating the symlink does not fetch a new icon from the target folder: the symlink continues to show the old icon. What's strage though is that if I right click and "Get Info.." on the symlink, it shows the correct icons in the information pane... but in the finder window itself, the icon is out of date. This leads me to believe there is some cache for the actual icon that is displayed in the finder window, and it needs to be refreshed. The issue can be recreated fairly easily: 1. Create a folder on Desktop called "Target Folder" 2. Right click Target Folder, Get Info.. and paste any icon from another folder. 3. Create a symlink on the Desktop called "Symbolic Folder" that links to Target Folder. (Symbolic Folder will now have the same icon as Target Folder). 4. Right click Target Folder, Get Info.. and paste a new, different icon. (Symbolic Folder does not update and will continue to show the old icon) 5. Right click Symbolic Folder, Get Info.. the information pane shows the correct icon. Any idea how to get Symbolic Folder to show the new icon in the Finder window? This issue has come up due to Yosemite's change of the folder icon style. I use symlinks to link my main user folders (Pictures, Movies, Music, etc) to folders in Dropbox, and many of my symlink icons continue to show the old, pre-Yosemite folder icons even though I have updated the icons of the folders they link to. I'd like to be able to clear out all of the old folder icons. This post seems relevant, but the solution did not work for me: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/110247/wrong-icon-of-unix-symbolic-link-in-finder **UPDATE** The "caching" of the incorrect symlink icon happens only in the "view mode" where the icon of the target folder is changed. So if you follow the steps above in a Finder window where the view mode is set to "icon" then the issue will persist only in Finder windows where the view mode is set to "icon". If you are browsing in a Finder window where the view mode is set to "cover flow" or "list" then the symlink functions correctly and the icon tracks the icon of the target folder just fine (until, that is, you change this icon of the target folder in either the cover flow or list view modes). This explains why the information pane for the symlink shows the correct icon.