3 Ways To Print File Listings On Your Mac

If you need to print the list of files in a folder, you can do it using TextEdit, the Terminal or by using a special trick involving your printer. Using TextEdit is a simple drag-and-drop, but you must be working with a plain text document. By using the ls command in the Terminal, you can customize which information is included with the listing. You can also simply drag and drop a folder to an alias to your printer, but you must create that alias first.

Comments: 9 Responses to “3 Ways To Print File Listings On Your Mac”

    Wayne Cherry
    5 years ago

    In terminal, why not pipe the results of ls straight to the printer: i.e.:

    ls | lp

    5 years ago

    Wayne: That's a good idea, but you may want to control which printer, which options, or even to send it to a PDF.

    Phil
    5 years ago

    The Path Finder app from cocoatech.com (which makes the Finder app of the macOS look and act like an anemic cousin) has a built-in report to automatically generate Directory Listings in the native text editor that comes with Path Finder. The first app I always install on a new Mac is Path Finder...

    Drew
    5 years ago

    Gary,
    Love all the weekly videos. Very informative and even after 30 years (starting at System 6) I still manage to learn something almost always.

    To give a little back, you can use the command line to dump directly to a text file, i.e. ls {drag in folder being listed} > Folderlist.txt and it will dump a text file out (to your root directory). To get it to the desktop type (or drag) in: ls /Users/Drew/Desktop/FOLDER > /Users/Drew/Desktop/Folderlist.txt. Have a great day!

    Bert Mullemeister
    5 years ago

    Hi Gary, even though I set my folder to list by name, it printed my file randomly (9 pages)
    Is there a way to solve that?
    Thanks for all your helpful files

    5 years ago

    Bert: Which method were you using?

    Mike Macewich
    5 years ago

    Good topic. I noticed that my Finder was set to GROUP BY KIND. When I dragged and dropped the files into TextEdit, the files came out in a random sequence without any regard to grouping.

    Bert Mullemeister
    5 years ago

    Hi Gary I used the method as per your video but had no luck getting the files alphabetically
    I used an app called Print Window app which allows sorting by name and t worked like a charm
    Thanks anyway

    5 years ago

    Bert: Which of the three methods did you try?

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