Making a symlink in Finder?

[DanL]

It's clear how to make a symlink in terminal, but is there REALLY no way to do it in the Finder? Symlinks are nice, but it's kind of inconvenient to have to spell out the desired symlink location in the terminal. Would be great to point to a file, tell it to make a symlink, and then drag that symlink wherever you want to put it.

 

[TonyAguila]

It's clear how to make a symlink in terminal, but is there REALLY no way to do it in the Finder? Symlinks are nice, but it's kind of inconvenient to have to spell out the desired symlink location in the terminal. Would be great to point to a file, tell it to make a symlink, and then drag that symlink wherever you want to put it.

Okay, all along I believed that making a symbolic link was part of the built-in services in macOS. See if you have it. Pick any Finder file, right-click on it and go to Services > Make Symbolic Link. It should create, in situ, the link with the “.symlink” extension. You can then move it to any other place you wish.

If you don’t have that service in your Finder, then I was wrong. I must have created that service myself using Automator, which I haven’t used in ages. If you are feeling up to it, launch Automator.app (in /Applications). Open Help from the menu. It will have a fairly detailed instruction on how to create a service. Enjoy!

 

[DanL]

OK, that's interesting. No, I don't have "Services" available on a random file (Monterey 12.5.1). I do have "Services" on folders, but Make Symbolic Link isn't one of them. But that's a good point that one could just hoke one up in Automator. Thanks!

 

[TonyAguila]

OK, that's interesting. No, I don't have "Services" available on a random file (Monterey 12.5.1). I do have "Services" on folders, but Make Symbolic Link isn't one of them. But that's a good point that one could just hoke one up in Automator. Thanks!

To give you an idea, this is what my (Finder) Services menu looks like. Once you get going with Automator, you might want to create other Services.

 

[DanL]

That's a good idea to use Automator. It occurs to me, though, that it's not as hard as I thought it was. Not much typing required. If you want to put a symlink on the Desktop, just go open the folder with the file you want to link, open Terminal, do "ln -s " there, drag the file into Terminal, then on the Desktop just drag a random file into Terminal, edit the name in Terminal to the symlink name, and press RETURN. That's pretty fast.

Oh, and geez Louise, making an Alias IS easily done in the Finder, and in many respects that's a better option. Now sure why I was getting enthused about symlinks. Although is is a little odd that when you do GetInfo on a symlink, the "Kind" is called out as an Alias. Also, FWIW, you can easily tag and untag an Alias.

 

[TonyAguila]

That's a good idea to use Automator. It occurs to me, though, that it's not as hard as I thought it was. Not much typing required. If you want to put a symlink on the Desktop, just go open the folder with the file you want to link, open Terminal, do "ln -s " there, drag the file into Terminal, then on the Desktop just drag a random file into Terminal, edit the name in Terminal to the symlink name, and press RETURN. That's pretty fast.

Oh, and geez Louise, making an Alias IS easily done in the Finder, and in many respects that's a better option. Now sure why I was getting enthused about symlinks. Although is is a little odd that when you do GetInfo on a symlink, the "Kind" is called out as an Alias. Also, FWIW, you can easily tag and untag an Alias.

There are differences between symlinks, aliases, hard links, soft links, etc. They have their own strengths and shortcomings. Symbolic links only point to the location of the original file. Aliases contain additional information about the original file. That’s why when you compare the sizes of the two, the alias will be much larger.

Apple has improved the structure of aliases. Before, some aliases were over a megabyte in size.

That’s why, depending on the situation and purpose, I try to decide which one would be better for which case, even though I’m sometimes tempted by the convenience of ⌘-⌥-drag to create and place the alias in it’s desired location.