Two users, one Documents and Photos folders?

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Level 1

6 points

Two users, one Documents and Photos folders?

I’ve just bought a new M1 MacBook Air a week ago and I’m migrating to macOS after using DOS and windows for more than 30 years. On my old PC I had lots of documents and photos that my wife and I share, we only had one user account on that PC but some separate folders for each of us.

We are using the Air with an external monitor and keyboard as a desktop and we have set up separate user accounts on the new Air because we want to have access to our own texts and emails as well as use our individual Apple accounts linked to our iPhones. But we also want to access, use, modify and create documents and photos together. I’ve read the Apple help about sharing documents, I’ve watched several YouTube videos about sharing documents. But all of them seem to be focused on sharing a single document or on sharing a random folder using the public folder or file sharing.

I would like to put all of our documents into the official Documents folder and all of our photos into the official Photos folder and have them accessible to both users. In other words I want to share those two official folders for Documents and Photos. So far I haven’t even found a discussion or video that mentions that kind of possibility. Is this possible? Any help or direction would be appreciated.

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 11.1

Posted on Jan 20, 2021 12:40 PM

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Answer 1

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KLC3751 Author

Level 1

6 points

Jan 28, 2021 4:55 PM in response to KLC3751

I’m coming back one more time to share my solution to this problem so that if anybody in the future has the same question they will have one way to solve it.

I was going to go ahead and try to put all of my files into the shared folder until I did some more research and found out that there are restrictions for files in that folder. Then my nephew suggested that I create a new volume on my hard drive for my shared documents and this is the perfect solution.

The Apple File System (APFS) allows you to create logical partitions on a hard drive container that are called volumes. The great thing about volumes is that the OS can expand them or shrink them as needed. So it’s not like an old-fashioned disk partition where a predetermined amount of disk space is allocated to the partition. As I add files the volume can grow in size without making any changes on my part. That means that the rest of the disk is still available for programs, applications and other files. And the new volume automatically shows up in the left hand list in finder. This is also a much better solution than what I originally wanted to do, make the documents folder shared. Now each user can still save personal documents to their own user profile while still having all of the shared documents available in the new volume.

making a new volume is simple with the disk utility. There is an Apple document online that tells you how to do it and it takes about 30 seconds. It is a great solution for anyone looking to share a large amount of data with another user.

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Answer 2

Halliday

Level 4

2,677 points

Feb 5, 2021 6:55 AM in response to KLC3751

KLC3751 wrote:

Halliday, what is the best way to keep learning about the OS? Books? Youtube? Any suggestions? I've always been interested in going beyond the help files.

…

I believe there are books. There is some on YouTube, even from Apple.

However, the “deeper”, UNIXy information does not seem to be shared by Apple: probably too much experience with new Mac users “hosing” their systems with command line “hacking”. (This is, likely, also the reason why the core Operating System [OS] is so “locked down”, on the Mac.)

Much of the underlying OS of macOS is Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) UNIX. So books and other sources on BSD will, likely, be of help. (There is some GNU, there, as well.)

The command line ‘man’ (for Manual) pages are a great resource, once you have the basics. They are, at least, the “final word”, for command-line utilities on your system.

However. Be forewarned that the low-level utilities, while powerful, are also to be treated with great care! The greater the power, the greater the ability to “destroy”.

As much as possible, I recommend staying with the high-level Graphical User Interface (GUI) utilities, such as Disk Utility, for system modifications, such as at the filesystem level.

I only recommend going to lower-levels once you understand the ramifications and interactions.

I also recommend you use the resources, here, on Apple Support Communities: there are many, here, that are quite familiar with the command-line utilities! (However, I recommend using separate Questions, on the appropriate macOS topic fora [Mac OS & System Software - Apple Community], for your queries. In fact, you should, probably, get as familiar as you can, with such areas, around here, so you can get the “lay of the land”, so to speak.)

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Answer 3

Branta_uk

Level 7

32,666 points

Jan 20, 2021 1:58 PM in response to KLC3751

This might be easy if I have understood you correctly, but you might have to dig around a little depending on your current settings. I will assume you both have user accounts already created on your MacBook Air, and your Finder layout is on the installation default. If you have changed the layout of Finder you probably know enough about it to pick up the clues.

Open Finder. In the Finder menu pick View/as List

Scroll down (if necessary?) in the left pane and click on the MacBook listed under Locations, probably called <somename>'s MacBook Air.

The right pane should show a list under Macintosh HD, one of the child entries should be Users. (This is where you might need to open and expand lists as necessary).

Expand Users and you should see your two User names, and a folder called Shared. That is where you put your shared docs etc. If you select Get Info on Shared you will (should) see that "everyone" has read and write privileges.

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Answer 4

KLC3751 Author

Level 1

6 points

Jan 21, 2021 1:14 PM in response to Branta_uk

I finally had a chance to work on this. First, when I go to finder the locations in the left hand pane doesn't show my computer, only Network. But I went to Go in the menu to get to my computer.

I guess I didn't explain well what I want to do. If I understand the OS each user has an official Documents folder and each user has an official Pictures folder that is the default location for those types of files. I would like to make those two folders shared so that when I go to Documents all of our shared documents are there and when I go to Pictures all of our shared pictures are there. That would be simple and obvious.

I realize I can put files in the Shared folder but to do that then all of my data, about 400gb, would reside inside that one Shared folder, all of my docs, all of my photos. It seems to be an unwieldy solution. Does that make sense?

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Answer 5

Halliday

Level 4

2,677 points

Feb 1, 2021 3:39 PM in response to KLC3751

Sounds good, KLC3751!

As you keep learning about this Operating System (OS), you will find that there are ways to Mount drive Volumes (and whole drives) onto other folders, elsewhere on your filesystem.

You can also set up “links” from one location to other places.

Since this is a Unixy OS, there’s a whole lot more one can do than old Windows.

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Answer 6

KLC3751 Author

Level 1

6 points

Feb 4, 2021 3:21 PM in response to Halliday

Halliday, what is the best way to keep learning about the OS? Books? Youtube? Any suggestions? I've always been interested in going beyond the help files.

One thing I've been surprised by my move to Mac is the lack of information about Macs available through google searches. With Windows I can search a problem and get dozens if not hundreds of personal blogs, websites and chat rooms where real, smart people have the same problems and show in detail how to solve them. So far, when I've done searches about the problems I've encountered with my new Air I get a few hits from official Apple sources and not much else, besides a lot of obviously fake web pages that seem to exist just to get clicks and that regurgitate boilerplate nonsense. Very few real people who know what they are talking about.

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