Applications Not Showing in Finder on Mac
If you want to quickly manage your apps on Mac, open Finder, select Applications in the left pane and the tool will list all your apps. You can then launch the apps you’re interested in, remove them from your computer, and more. But the Applications folder may sometimes fail to show all your apps or the folder is completely empty. Let’s see how you can troubleshoot this problem.
What to Do Is Apps Won’t Show in Finder
Identify the Real File Location
On Mac, there are two Applications folders: one is located under your Home directory, while the other one is available at the root level. If the app you’re looking for won’t show in Applications, maybe it’s in a different directory. Or you’re only looking at the Applications folder in your user account.
Check your Download folder, maybe you forgot to copy your app from there to Applications. You can also go to the Applications folder at the root level and check if you can find your app there. Click on the Go menu and select Macintosh HD to display the root directory contents. Open the Applications folder and check if the app you’re looking for is there.
Use System Information
There’s another method that you can use to find elusive apps on your Mac.
- Press the Option key and then click on your Apple menu.
- Select System Information (the first option).
- In the left pane, go to Software and select Applications. Wait until the computer populates the right pane with the apps installed on the device.
- Select the app you’re interested in and go to the pane below to check the details. You’ll also see information about the app’s location. Use your cursor to copy the app path.
- Then launch Finder again, click on the Go menu, select Go to Folder and paste the app path in.
- Hit the Return key to open the folder containing the app.
Launch the App Using Terminal
If you don’t have the time to manually identify the location of your app, you can use Terminal to launch it directly, no matter where it’s located. So, open Terminal and enter the
open -a AppName command. Replace AppName with your app’s actual name. For example, if you want to launch FaceTime, enter open -a FaceTime. If there’s a space in the name of the app, use quotation marks: open -a “App Name”.
Conclusion
If you can’t find the app you’re looking for in the Applications folder under Finder, go to the Applications folder at the root level and the app should be there. Alternatively, you can use System Information to detect the location of the problematic app. In conclusion, the app’s not missing, and there’s nothing wrong with Finder. Most likely, you’re just looking in the wrong place. We hope you find this guide useful. Share your feedback in the comments below.
