Application folders: home vs system

I keep them in the default sidebar Applications folder (system, not home) so that all users (I actually only have one) can use these apps.

 

I'm wondering did you create that folder yourself (~/Applications)? I checked both iMacs in my house and my powerbook and none had an ~/Applications folder. (Though really you could keep apps anywhere).

Pros/Con wise the only one I could think of would be other users wouldn't have access to the apps stored in ~/Applications, though that could be either a Pro or a Con depending how you look at it.

 

There is the issue of accessibility as previously mentioned, but also security.

If you set up two users, an admin (who installs the apps and has edit/change rights over them, does maintenance etc) and an every day "managed" user that you use for everything else, then in the odd case like the recent Trojan episode, the apps can't be modified without you typing in the Admin (owner's) password and you are less likely to accidentally do something disastrous to your system.

And you can set up additional managed accounts for casual use, with severe limits on what they can and can't do.

With managed users you can limit who has access to what apps, even when they're all in the "public" apps folder.

Installing apps in the user folder on the odd occasion when i've done it has so far always proved to be royally inconvenient at some other point later on. Actually, the only time i really got carried away with it was when i was on a managed account myself and wasn't permitted to install my wonky software into the system apps folder, so had to put it in my user folder..

 

Sometimes OS X makes one on its own, and sometimes it doesn't. Simply make a folder called "Applications" in your home folder, and it'll recognize it as an applications folder (and give it the right icon). As others have said though, it's probably a better suggestion to use the standard /Applications.

 

I actually created an Applications folder when I thought I had trashed my Apps when accidentally moving the folder from the Finder sidebar. Thats bad usability by the way - making it go 'poof', with no explanation as to what happened. This was as a Mac newbie.

Then I realised a couple of weeks later that I had 2 Applications folders. The original which was still there and the one I created. I simply moved all the apps to the proper Apps folder from my home folder, and then trashed it.

Its important to make sure they are in the Mac HD > Apps folder, especially Apple applications. Thats where system update looks. If the apps are elsewhere, they wont trigger an update.

 

<aside>Yeah, same with the Dock poof</aside>