September 27, 2026

Software in the Mac world - folder or directory

I began life in the Unix world and directories were all I knew. Then I found myself entangled to various degrees with Windows, where I found that the word "folder" is mostly used instead. Now that I am on Mac, I am not sure what word to use.

Interestingly, the word "folder" was popularized by Mac in the 1980s. Like many things, it was adopted (ripped off) by Windows. People in both groups apparently decided that "folder" made more sense to the common man.

On Mac, both words are in common use. The word "directory" will be found more often if you look at internals or work on the command line. Use "man ls" on a Mac and it tells you: 

ls - list directory contents
Similarly for "man mkdir" you will get: 
mkdir - make directories
Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!

Adventures in Computing / tom@mmto.org