Seems unlikely, given that in MacOS you could e.g.:

- Drag and drop the file into a terminal to insert the path

- Copy and paste the file into the terminal, which inserts the path

- Press Command+I to show a popover describing the path to the file

- Enable the "show path bar" option in the Finder's "view" menu, which will show a nice graphical representation of the path to the current location at the bottom of the window (which lets you copy the POSIX path to each item)

- For more advanced users, run the command `defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool YES` to show the full path to the current folder in each Finder window title

On linux side:

- Drag and drop the file into a terminal to insert the path

- Copy and paste the file into the terminal, which inserts the path

- Press Alt + Enter to see details describing the path to the file

- Press Ctrl+L to see full path. Or just use better file manager like Nemo

Also in the same ballpark, you can right-click on the window title and see a dropdown with the parent directories. Which primarily lets you navigate to them.

Ah, and also if you alt-rightclick on an item, you can copy its path to the clipboard. Or you can open the ‘Edit’ menu with alt pressed and copy the path to the current folder. Apparently there's even a shortcut for this.

> defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool YES

THANK YOU!

Here's one more:

- use columns view

MacOS has been a pain for me with this; in some of the later revisions it's always a pain to get around to the right place. I don't spend time learning Mac in depth; I'm mostly a Unix person, using a Mac as just a terminal to the stuff I actually deal with (which mostly is web based or run on a datacenter somewhere.)

It's certainly fine if you work a lot locally with the Mac; but for me, the cost-effective thing has been to fumble around each time (since I only do this a few times a year) rather than memorize handling that I use so seldom.

The parent comment was complaining about that being impossible in Linux before the conversation switched to Mac. Which is it?

Also, nothing to memorize about copy & paste or drag & drop. I would say you’re used to Linux GUIs not doing what you expect so the obvious solutions aren’t even considered.

Where did Linux enter into it? I just don't typically use GUIs much, and I use the Mac GUI much more than I use Linux GUIs. But I've used command lines since I started with computers (before GUIs were common.)

Dragging a file from a file-browsing application into a different application (like the terminal) just to get the path is unintuitive and not obvious.

Showing the Finder path bar is the more obvious option. Nautilus, the file browser on some Linux distros, supports this as well.

Dolphin, in KDE land, has this functionality as well.

Not any application, the operation is “convert this thing i am dragging into text” for which the result is obvious.

> Also, nothing to memorize about copy & paste or drag & drop.

To a terminal. I thought Linux was the one where you needed to open a terminal to do basic things, yet from my experience it's usually MacOS that needs a terminal for such basic things as turning off mouse acceleration.

Windows also has a similar problem: The URL might not actually have the "true" path. It's so infuriating each time I try to get the path to my Downloads folder on Windows, and end up getting "This PC\Downloads". Please. I'm a grown up. Give me the real damn path...

Seriously, Linux has a lot of UX issues, but hiding the full path of files is a problem that plagues literally every single OS file manager. It seems that at some point, all the major OS makers agreed that users are too stupid to understand a file hierarchy, and came up with tricks to hide it.

> It seems that at some point, all the major OS makers agreed that users are too stupid to understand a file hierarchy, and came up with tricks to hide it.

And this is why I find myself mostly in the text shell.

Were I to go graphical the minimum I want is a simple address bar that I can override the current path with a specified path at will.

Maybe a tree view like in Windows 95 Explorer just to pretty things up. Some of the modern comforts like thumbnail images would also be welcome.

I wish they would stop insulting their users who have taken the time to understand the underlying technicalities of a file system. All this should be user-configurable in a good file manager. SpaceFM and PcmanFM come closest to what I've specified.

Hm. Cater to the 1% who have shown that they're able to learn complex concepts easily, or support the 99% who would rather not think about internals and use a computer as a simple tool.

That's not a difficult question. The only time it makes sense to expose the internals is if you build a specialist tool for people who like internals exposed.

This means that no, it shouldn't be "user configurable" either. You don't want a combinatorial explosion of states in your UI for a tiny set of users in the general purpose case, and you don't want to create a honking fat tool for specialists who'll only use the specialist path.

The computer industry is discovering what the mechanical tools industry has known for a while: You can build a general purpose tool that's simple & straightforward, or you can make a specialist tool.

Pretty much any specialist will be slightly unhappy with the specialist tool and modify it to their own requirements, but you can't build a specialist tool that makes even close to all specialists happy. The specialists will also continue to use the generalist tool if it gets the job done, but they'll complain every step of the way.

Being able to see the path in Finder doesn't seem like something that only 1% of users would want, though. I've seen "normal people" get very frustrated because they couldn't figure out where they saved a file. They saved it in a folder called "Documents", but they then tried to find it in a different folder also called "Documents". Hardly seems problematic to show the path to the folder.

> "This PC\Downloads"

I find this annoying as well, but it only happens when you use quick access shortcuts. And then once you're in a sub folder it'll display the full path in the title bar provided you turn on "Display the full path in the title bar" in the Folder Options.

Navigating directly to c:\Users\MyUser\Downloads will also show the full path in the title bar.

It seems some of these shortcuts have "special" behaviours in explorer.

According to https://superuser.com/questions/1362386/always-show-absolute... Windows does not mess up the path (yet) if it is a UNC path of the format \\Computer-Name\Users\MyUser so you can pin these folders to Quick Access to benefit from bookmarking folders while keeping the ability to copy folder paths easily.

Thanks for that.

After reading r/talesfromtechsupport for a while, it's apparent that there are quite a few people who are too stupid to understand a file hierarchy.

My most-used MacOS shortcuts for navigation:

Terminal -> Finder:

    open .

Finder -> Terminal:

I made a Bash function:

    function cdf {
        DIR=$(osascript -e 'tell app "Finder" to POSIX path of (insertion location as alias)')
        cd "$DIR"
    }

View/Show Path Bar.

> Did you mean MacOS?

In macos I don't have to edit random .conf files in system/application directories just to make my wifi work correctly. The graphical UI is configurable enough that I rarely need to modify anything outside of my normal user directories.

Where as in ubuntu the forums/stack overflow usually say "go to this file at /sys/whatever and write in this". Hence the need for full file paths.

Really, don't you?

The first thing I do on any Mac is to drop into Terminal to run this:

    defaults delete com.apple.systempreferences AttentionPrefBundleIDs

And don't get me started on the wiping `/private/var/db/mds/messages/${UID}/se_SecurityMessages` after each update, without which SMB doesn't work.

Oh really? MacOS is fine when things works, but when they don't it's pretty much the same as linux, for better or for worse.

Quick example, because I'm trying to make my nas usable on a mac and it's given me a headache.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208209

On your NAS, put /.DS_Store/ into veto criteria.

I mean, I just learned that to show the path in the title of the Finder window I need to run:

    defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool YES

Please tell me how to turn off mouse acceleration in MacOS without opening a terminal, because I didn't find another way.

It's quite a basic thing, most games include it in their settings yet it doesn't seem important enough to have a setting in the OS itself.