Learn how to easily access your file on your mac desktop by creating its shortcut there rather than copying the whole file to the desktop. Mac OS X Tutorials and App reviews from HowTech.
I have been installing some popular software for Mac and observed that installation packages do not create a desktop shortcut as they often do on windows. Note taking app for ipad.
What is good practice to follow: Should I create a desktop shortcut for my application which i have developed?
If you've ever wished you could have a single folder in two different places at once, you should consider creating an alias, which is known as a shortcut on Windows-based operating systems. An alias looks like a folder, but when you double click it, you open the actual folder it points to. I want to create a keyboard shortcut to i.e. Open Firefox while I am working in another application. I know I can use ⌘ CMD + T when I am in Firefox to open a new tab. I haven't found a way to create that kind of shortcuts in System Preferences.
9 Answers
I would say desktop alias creation at install time for an app is an anti-pattern and bad practice for developers to implement as default behavior.
- The desktop belongs to the end user and macOS is designed to install apps for every user account and to consider more than one user per computer. To accomplish this, you’re either escalating the installer to root privileges to change multiple desktops or you’re ignoring / short cutting the way apps can (or possibly should) get installed for all subsequent users.
- The launchpad and dock and spotlight / Siri are the bespoke app launch tools and idioms so you can assume your customers are very familiar with how to start an app they just chose to install.
The most kind way to do this would be to onboard the user and ask if they want any shortcuts the first time they launch the app. Apple recommends you have a very light onboarding, so even this is against 'best practice' but I would see it as the best way to make an alias if you feel it's the right call for the majority of the users of your app.
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I would encourage you to read over the HIG - Human Interface Guidelines and the many free WWDC videos on app packaging and installation - your question is a good one and thinking how people see your app during installation is super helpful to make your app succeed with many customers.
bmike♦bmikeThis answer was written before the clarification that the OP is from a developer perspective, not end user
I've always been firmly of the school of 'nothing on the desktop' personally - but each to his/her own.
You can find apps to launch in one of at least 6 ways.
The Apple Menu > Recent Items
The Applications folder itself
LaunchPad
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Spotlight
Drag the App to the Dock
Double-click any document & the relevant app will launch, or right-click Open With > for a list of alternatives which can handle that document type.
So many alternatives that it doesn't feel necessary to clutter the desktop with another.
However, it's your machine - do as you wish ;-)
No. You should just copy the app to /Applications (or ~/Applications), and let the user choose if they want to create a shortcut in the dock or somewhere else.
A lot of the time, 'installers' in macOS are just disk images (dmg files) containing the app itself and a shortcut to the Applications folder. The user can choose to drag the app there, or anywhere else.
Olympus dictation software windows 10. As a Mac user for some years, I don't recall for any app that creates desktop shortcut after installation. I believe this practice is more familiar for users that come from a Windows environment for the first time, but definitely this is not a good approach, not because of the memory or cpu usage, but for the multiple ways you can access to your apps in MacOS, which are more efficient and elegant.
Yes, use the Dock. You will probably have to drag the application icon onto it to add it, though.
If you want the icons to always appear, in the Dock control panel uncheck the list item 'Automatically hide and show the Dock'.
Frankly, this comes down to your personal preference. There is no bad or good practice really when using desktop shortcuts.
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Generally on Mac, you would use the dock
However, feel free to add your icons directly onto the desktop space. Personally, I use my desktop simply for projects that I am working on at the time, everything else is filed away appropriately. So if I have a job that I am working on, that file structure will be easily accessible through my desktop.
My Current Desktop Layout
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As others have said, placing commonly-used applications on the dock is the way most Mac users deal with this, often in conjunction with Spotlight (Cmd-Space) to open less frequently-used applications.
If the dock isn't big enough for you, check out Launchpad, which is in your Applications folder. You can configure a keyboard shortcut to open it (in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts), and it shows you a grid of launch icons for all your installed applications, much like an iPhone home screen, which you can rearrange as you see fit. Most long-time Mac users don't use or like it much, but if you're used to having shortcuts for everything on your desktop rather than using the Windows Start menu, it might work for you.
You can also access something more like a Start menu by adding the Applications folder to your dock, then right-clicking it and selecting 'Show Contents as List'. Then whenever you click it in future, you'll see a menu of all your installed applications that you can click to launch. Photoshop 7 full version with crack.
I like an uncluttered desktop and Dock, and have used MoofMenu for years to allow easy access to various applications, utilities, and documents. MoofMenu places a Dogcow icon in the menubar. Here's mine:
Each of MoofMenu's items and lists and individual items are cascading and user-configurable, and easily reached quickly with the mouse or trackpad. I have more items in these menus that appear in the Dock, but fewer than are stored in SSD/Applications folder. After effects free download full version.
If you're very facile with navigation-by-keyboard in Finder windows, you can probably access items more quickly that way. But I'm not that good, and I enjoy seeing and easily choosing from a list of items that includes perhaps 95% of my regular targets. https://mesacpugni.tistory.com/13.
IIRC, cascading menus were introduced in Mac OS 9. I found them very useful then, and with MoofMenu still very useful now.
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Reasons NOT to use the desktop
- You can't organize by date, size, and all the other attributes you can in a Finder or Explorer window
- You can't even see the entire file name if it's long
- At least in Windows, there's an annoying overlay of 'Public' and personal desktops, which makes tracking down the actual file a royal pain
- Apps belong in Apps or ProgramFiles directories. Period.
- the Desktop is not navigable the way a Finder/Explorer window is, nor does it have quick-navigation sidebar.
Reasons TO use the desktop
- Idiot developers put a link icon there
- You never learned that directory windows (Finder/Explorer) exist.
- You like wasting minutes trying to find the icon you want, especially as it blends into that funky background art you put on your desktop.
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I have a couple of Mac programs I use all the time and would like to create shortcuts for them on my Mac OS X desktop. How do I easily do that?
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Actually, there are a couple of things to consider here, one of which is that you might prefer to pin the apps to the Dock rather than have shortcuts on your desktop. In fact, the very way you phrase it is still very Windows centric. Just as sometimes the best place for an app is on the Taskbar, on a Mac sometimes it’s a lot smarter to add the icon to the Dock and, as needed, shrink the Dock down.
So let’s look at both possible solutions, then I would encourage you to start with the Dock and see if that works for you as it’s a pretty Mac-centric solution. If not, well, you can fill up your Mac desktop just as you might a Windows PC and if that works, that’s good. 🙂
The easiest way to add something to the Dock is to launch the program, then click-hold the mouse for a second or two until the menu pops up. While still holding down the mouse, move the cursor to “Options” and…
That’s the choice you want. “Keep in Dock”. Once you’ve selected that, quitting the program won’t make the icon vanish from the Dock, just the little glow spot underneath it (unless you’ve disabled that).
Done with the apps in your Dock? You can drag an icon off and remove it, or you can click-hold and again choose Options for the “Remove” option:
So if that doesn’t float your proverbial boat, no worries. Working with application aliases is a bit more tricky, but not horribly so. First off, open up your Applications folder and when you’ve found the icon for the app you want to have “shortcut” on the Desktop, Control-Click on it to bring up the context menu:
Choose “Make Alias” and a copy of the app appears. Well, it’s not a copy, just a pointer to the original, but they sure look similar:
Here’s where you can see a bit of Mac magic happen. Drag it out of the Folder and onto the Desktop itself, or drag the alias onto “Desktop” on the side menu:
Make A Shortcut For An App
OS X is smart enough to understand what you’re trying to do and what shows up on the Desktop isn’t the clunky “Aperture alias” but…
The only thing that cues you that it’s an alias (or shortcut, whatever) is the little arrow.
Again, I encourage you to try adding your fave apps to the Dock and try that for a few days. If it’s not cutting it for you, it’s easy enough to drag aliases onto the Desktop.
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