Use The Ditto Command To Properly Merge Folders On Mac

Use The Ditto Command To Properly Merge Folders On Mac

Merging folders on a Mac is kind of a pain. When you do it, Finder tries to overwrite any file with the same name with the newer version. That means it’s easy to accidentally erase a whole folder. How-To Geek shows off a better way to merge folders using Terminal.

If you want to merge folders properly use the ditto command in Terminal. For example:

ditto ~/Desktop/Test ~/Downloads/Test

This will merge the Downloads/Test folder with the Desktop/Test folder, overwriting the contents of the destination folder with files from the source folder, while still keeping anything that’s different. You can also do this by option-clicking a folder and dragging and dropping it, but it doesn’t work as well. If you’ve been annoyed by Finder’s inconsistent merge options, ditto should do the trick.

How to Merge Folders on OS X Without Losing All Your Files (Seriously) [How-To Geek]


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

Here are the cheapest plans available for Australia’s most popular NBN speed tier.

At Lifehacker, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.

Comments