The concept of directory structure on macOS

This article is aimed to introduce directories hierarchy for macOS. macOS is also followed by Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS). But it has a little difference, that this article collects for you. The content of directories in macOS is divided to two part, standard directories and hidden directories.

Standard Directories

/Applications : Application’s contents

• This directory is where you install apps intended for use by all users of a computer.

/Library : Shared libraries, files

• Apps should use the Library directory to store app-specific (or system-specific) resources.

/Network : Network related files and libraries.

• It contains the list of computers in the local area network.

/System : System related files, libraries, and preference.

• This directory contains the system resource required by macOS to run. These resources are not modified by recommend.

/Users : User home directory

• All of files involves Individual users are placed in there.

/Volumes : Mount point for removable media

• This directory contains subdirectories which are used as mount point for removable media.
• E.g. cd-rom, floppy disk, dmg mounts etc.

Hidden Directories
This directories are followed FHS on Linux. You can also reference “The concept of directory structure on Linux”.

/bin : Essential user command binaries

• All the executable binary programs.

/dev : Devices files

• It contains hardware device files.

/etc : Host-specific system configuration

• It contains all configuration for system.

/sbin : System binaries

• The essential binaries which only can be executed by system.

/tmp : Temporary files

• The temporary files created by apps and system.

/usr : Secondary hierarchy

• It contains nonessential binaries, header files and other data.

/var : Variable data

• Intuitively, it contains log and other file content is variable.

Reference: macOS File System