Adding Folder to Finder Sidebar with Custom Name

Question

I'd like to add a a shortcut to Finder's Places Sidebar. The folder's name happens to be Applications, so I want to give it a different name since there's already the standard Applications folder there.

Renaming the folder on the sidebar renames the actual folder, which is undesirable because I think it might break the program which uses it.

I've tried making an alias, and then dragging the alias to the Sidebar, but the real name gets used.

Do you know how I can create this shortcut on the sidebar with a different name?

Answer 1

Before anything, you should try renaming the folder. It will most likely not break your app because of how HFS works. But there are indeed some applications that might not link properly to files.

I could come up with 4 different solutions:

1. This may be the simplest: do it the other way around. Use whatever name you like on the folder and add an Alias to it. Grab the folder with the name you want and add it to the sidebar. The alias will not change. In your instance, you'd rename your Applications from within your "username" folder to something like My Applications and as we already know, that would be the enforced name on the sidebar. Then add an alias (or a symlink) to it called Applications, which will probably work for your program.

   As Daniel said as a comment, you can aditionally hide the alias or the folder (but not the symlink) from finder by using: chflags hidden folder/alias. Use chflags nohidden folder/alias to show it again and with ls -lO (that's a capital o) you can see its flags on Terminal.

2. Use a savedSearch. You can name them whatever you want. Steps:

   1. go to that alternate Applications folder
   2. begin a search typing anything
   3. clear whatever you typed in
   4. select "File Name" (rather than "Contents") and your folder (rather than "This Mac")
   5. press the + sign
   6. press on Kind to add Other
   7. choose File Visibility and suit your taste
   8. press "Save", choose any name leaving the ".savedSearch" intact
   9. make sure "Add to Sidebar" is ticked.

3. If you prefer trying the hack, good luck with it. Basically you would edit ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.sidebarlists.plist (use Property List Editor if you have XCode installed) and change the Name of your custom useritems and restart Finder. Supposedly option+right click on Finder and Relaunch would do this last trick. I couldn't myself reproduce this and make it work, but maybe it will if you reboot the machine. I doubt anyone would ever build any tweaker for such an overlooked feature.

4. ForkLift is a great Finder alternative that will accept aliases on the sidebar.

Answer 2

Use an application instead.

Open /Applications/Utilities/AppleScript Editor and enter the following:

tell application "Finder" to set target of first window whose index is 1 to (POSIX file "/Users/danielbeck/Applications")

Save as application anywhere you like (see below for hint on this) and drag it from there to the Finder sidebar. Clicking This will navigate the frontmost Finder window to the specified folder.

To give it a "real" Applications Finder sidebar icon, navigate to /System/Library/CoreServices, right-click and Show Package Contents on CoreTypes.bundle. Then open Contents/Resources and open ToolbarAppsFolderIcon.icns in preview. Select the smallest version from the sidebar and press Cmd-C, then Get Info on your AppleScript application, select the icon and press Cmd-V to paste the Applications icon onto your application.

Drawbacks:

• No "selected" state in the sidebar when in the Applications folder
• Annoying (and ugly, since the selected icon is so tiny) animation whenever starting the application to navigate to the folder
• Doesn't really work with file dialogs (e.g. Open… and Save as…). Selecting it then will open the folder where you stored the application (so store it in the folder you want to link it to!)
• Cannot Command-Click to open in a new window (might be possible through advanced AppleScript-fu).

Answer 3

The following worked for me. I create an alias, renamed to something like -> Application and then put it in the Favorites section of the sidebar. That way it won't actually rename the folder. If I tried to put it in the iCloud section it reverted back to the folder name.

Answer 4

You could rename the folder, while putting a symlink called "Applications" pointing to it inside its parent directory. Then all paths going through foo/Applications would continue to work.