Mac OS X doesn’t have an obvious way to view the exact text based path to a folder (otherwise known as a directory) in the finder window. You can have it show a graphical path, but getting just the text based path to a directory (for use in the Terminal for example) requires a couple of extra steps.
- In the Finder on your Mac, choose Go Go to Folder. Type the folder’s pathname (for example, /Library/Fonts/ or /Pictures/), then click Go. A slash (/) at the beginning of a pathname indicates that the starting point is the top level of your computer’s folder structure.
- In all versions of Mac OS X and macOS, the user downloads folder is located in the users Home directory in a folder appropriately called “Downloads”. The relative path for the Downloads folder in MacOS is /Downloads/ while the exact path would be /Users/username/Downloads/.
I've found my partially downloaded update files in /private/var/folders/<blah>/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate/<blah>
The <blahs> appear to be some hash of either the computer or the software being downloaded. Try the following:
Open a Terminal
sudo find /private -name ' SomePartOfTheDriverNameYouAreLookingFor' -print
then sudo cd <the directory shown above>
Note I don't see /private in finder because of the permissions on it (hence the need for sudo above).
Also note, I had one directory in <blah> named -Cache- which is tricky to cd into because the leading - is perceived as an argument to cd, so I just cd into the entire directory path instead.
Finally, be wary doing things as root (sudo) as you can end up damaging your OS (so don't go around removing files you are not sure about)
The <blahs> appear to be some hash of either the computer or the software being downloaded. Try the following:
Open a Terminal
sudo find /private -name ' SomePartOfTheDriverNameYouAreLookingFor' -print
then sudo cd <the directory shown above>
Note I don't see /private in finder because of the permissions on it (hence the need for sudo above).
Also note, I had one directory in <blah> named -Cache- which is tricky to cd into because the leading - is perceived as an argument to cd, so I just cd into the entire directory path instead.
Finally, be wary doing things as root (sudo) as you can end up damaging your OS (so don't go around removing files you are not sure about)
Mac Terminal Path
Directory Path File
May 31, 2009 9:05 AM