Mac OSX Terminal – Create Desktop Shortcuts/Symlink

Posted on By David Kittell

Coming from Windows I sometimes still have the desire or need for a desktop shortcut/symlink.

There are two easy options for this

  1. Right click the application, select “Make Alias” and drag that alias to the desktop and potentially rename it at one point or the other.
  2. Open Terminal (Applications – Utilities) and run a command similar to below, the advantage of running the terminal strings below is that you can easily choose the location and name of the shortcut/symlink
ln -s /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app ~/Desktop/Terminal
ln -s /Applications/VNC\ Viewer.app ~/Desktop/VNC
ln -s /Applications/Microsoft\ Outlook.app ~/Desktop/Outlook
ln -s /Applications/Skype.app ~/Desktop/Skype
ln -s /Applications/Mail.app ~/Desktop/Email
ln -s /Applications/Microsoft\ Excel.app ~/Desktop/Excel
All information on this site is shared with the intention to help. Before any source code or program is ran on a production (non-development) system it is suggested you test it and fully understand what it is doing not just what it appears it is doing. I accept no responsibility for any damage you may do with this code.
CentOS Code Fedora Mac OS X Shell Mac OSX Red Hat Ubuntu UNIX UNIX Shell Scripts

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