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.