How do I share a folder between users on a single Mac?

September 12, 2007 7:16 PM

Help a new OSX user love his Mac. How do I share my pictures folder with another user on the same computer?

My wife and I share our new Macbook. Overall I'm really happy with it, but after using Windows machines for the last 10 years, there are a few things that are taking me time to figure out, and a couple that are driving me crazy.

I want my wife's account to be able to access my Pictures folder when she logs in, so we don't have to download all our pictures twice. I've already set the Ownership and Permissions to allow her access, but it doesn't seem to be working.

posted by sauril to computers & internet (4 comments total)

Click on the Finder icon (the Picasso face). You'll get the window with the various columns of things on your system. At the very top of the far left column will be an icon of your hard disk, and its name (probably Macintosh). Click on this to see its contents. Inside the hard disk is a folder called Users. Click on this to see its contents. Inside this are all the users (you, your wife) and a folder called Shared. Move the pictures from your user folder into the Shared folder. Then you can each access the pictures from the same place.

I confess that my husband and I don't have separate user accounts, so I don't know what happens to iPhoto if the library is stored in the Shared folder. You might have to move the entire Pictures folder in there, and you also might have to change a setting in iPhoto to tell it to look there for your library.
posted by Capri at 7:28 PM on September 12, 2007

What does "doesn't seem to be working" translate to, in practice? That is: when you do X, you expect to see Y, and instead you see Z. What are X, Y and Z? Please be as specific as possible.

One thing you might not be aware of is that Unix-based systems will generally require you to have both Read and Execute permissions on all folders that contain the files you're looking for, as well the files themselves, if you want to be able to browse to those files.

So as well as giving your wife's account the appropriate permissions on the Pictures folder, you'll have to do the same thing for the folder that contains that folder, and the folder that contains that, and so on, until you've worked your way out to a folder that you can both access already.
posted by flabdablet at 7:36 PM on September 12, 2007

flabdablet - that worked! I gave her permissions on my user directory as well and all is good.

Thanks!
posted by sauril at 7:45 PM on September 12, 2007

Share an iPhoto library among multiple users. Should work if you want to share folders for anything else.
posted by ldenneau at 7:46 PM on September 12, 2007