how to search for specific file extension osx

You can do this by selecting the file and clicking Get Info from the File menu.

Or you may right-click (Control-click) the file and select Get Info from the contextual menu that pops up.

When the information window opens, it should look something like this.

If the files extension is already hidden and you would like to show it, uncheck the Hide extension box.

To do this, click on the desktop to activate the Finder if is not already active and select Preferences.

All file extensions will now be visible both on the desktop and in open windows.

If you want to hide file extensions again, simply open the Finder Preferences window and uncheck the box.

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For example, if you select a file in the Finder and press Command-C to copy it, the behavior when pasting it will be different, depending on the program being used.

In some cases the program will only paste the file name, but in others it may try to embed the files contents or its icon where you have pasted.

The same goes for dragging and dropping files from the Finder; they similarly may be handled either as file names or as icon or content objects.

If you would like to instead just get the file path of the selected document, you can use the Finders Show Path Bar option in the View menu, open the document in a program and use the path menu, or by searching for the item in Spotlight followed by holding the Option and Command keys while hovering your mouse over a search result to reveal its path in the preview window.

However, these approaches do not give you the option to copy the file path as text.

You can select the path to the files parent folder in an info window and copy it.

Select the item and press Command-I to open the information window for it, and then locate the path in the General section next to the keyword Where.

While generally intended to be a quick view of file information, the text content in the information window can be selected by clicking and dragging or by double- and triple-clicking, so you can use these approaches to select the file path and copy it from this window.

Drag a file or folder to the Terminal window to instantly reveal its path.

Being a text-based tool itself, Terminal will quickly output the specified file path as text, which can be selected and copied.

To do this, simply launch Terminal and then drag a file to its window, and Terminal will output its file path at the command prompt, which you can then copy.

You do not need to know any Terminal commands to do this, and can close the Terminal window when you are done copying.

Drag a file to this text field to reveal and then copy its full path (be sure to first delete any existing text).

To do this, open a new Finder window by pressing Command-N, and then press Shift-Command-G to reveal the Go to Folder panel for the new window.

Then drag a target file from another window to the Go to Folder text field, where it will be converted to a full text path that you can select and copy.

Create this simple workflow in Automator to have a service that will copy the paths of selected files as text.

Then make sure the inputs for it are Files or Folders in the Finder (done with the menus at the top of the workflow).

Then drag the Copy to Clipboard action to the workflow area and save the service with a name like Copy Path as Text.

While it seems like a replacement for pressing Command-C in the Finder, this approach will ensure that the file paths are copied in full as text instead of only as references that will either be truncated to file names, or be otherwise altered.

With this service created, you can now select any number of items in the Finder, right-click them, and then choose Copy Path as Text from the Services contextual menu and be able to paste the path (or paths) in the location of your choice.

You can also use the keyboard system preferences to assign a custom hot key such as Option-Command-C to the service, so you can invoke it directly.

Keep in mind that this approach will not copy a file reference, so you cannot use it to move or copy files from one location to another in the Finder, but it will help when managing lengthy and sometimes complex file paths, or the paths of more than one selected item.

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How To Search For Specific File Extension Osx