How Many Mac Third-Party App Installs Work

New Mac users are often confused about how third-party apps from web sites are installed. After downloading, all you get it is a file that when opened just shows the app with an arrow and folder. Here's what to do next.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at what goes on when you try to install many 3rd party apps. 
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So I've noticed that many new Mac users, and some long time Mac users that may not have run into this before, are a little confused about what happens when you try to install a 3rd party app that you've downloaded from the web, not from the App Store. 
So as an example here let's look at couple browsers. Here's the download page for Goggle Chrome. Say you want to add this as a second browser on your Mac. So you click the download button here and then when you allow downloads it begins the download. If I look here under Downloads it shows that it is complete and I can even use this little magnifying glass to go to it. When I do so it opens up the Downloads Folder and here, sure enough, is what was downloaded. 
What you've got here is a file with .dmg extension. If you double click on it it seems to open this file up and you get a window that looks like this. Each app seems to have a different kind of look to it. But general idea is you get this window that opens, you see the app that you want to install, the one you downloaded. Then you see this folder here with an A on it. This, if you notice, looks just like your Applications Folder. If you look at the bottom left hand corner you'll notice this little curved arrow there. Then usually there's an arrow pointing from the app to this folder. 
So let's break this down. The file that you downloaded is actually a disk image. That's what the dmg stands for. A disk image is a compressed file that when you open it acts like its external hard drive. Sure enough if you look here in the Finder you could see it listed under Locations. There it is. In this case there's a little external hard drive called Goggle Chrome. So what it has done it's mounted this hard drive, that's not really a hard drive, it's actually a file, and it has given you access to what's inside. What's inside is a single file, this application here, and an arrow and this representation of your Applications Folder. 
Now a lot of people make a mistake at this point and they will simply double-click on the file. It will run the app. But what it is actually doing is it's running the app from this kind of fake external drive that's really a disk image. You haven't actually installed it on your Mac. Sometimes this is actually good for previewing an app. But other times the app will simply refuse to run saying it needs to be placed in the Applications Folder first. Either way you really should move it out of this disk image into the Applications Folder. That is, in fact, what this little representation of your Applications Folder is doing. It's giving you an easy way to get to the Applications Folder. If you actually select this you'll find it's a normal icon, sometimes with a name and sometimes without. You can see this just has a blank name here. Then if I go to File and then Get Info you can see here under Info it's of Kind Alias. What that means is it's basically this link to the actual folder, not the folder itself. 
So, sure enough, if I were to just double-click on this it would open up my Applications Folder. It's the same place I would get to if I went in the Finder here and either used the little Applications shortcut here on the left under Favorites or Go, Applications. You get to the same place. Now what it is doing here inside this disk image is it's giving you an easy way to move this application to your Applications Folder. Now I could simply drag and drop it into my Applications Folder like that. But that would entail having to open up another Finder window, go to the Applications Folder, and then do the Drag. This is trying to save you some steps. If you Drag from here to here it does the same thing. It would actually place the file in your Applications Folder using this shortcut or alias to the Applications Folder to make it easy for you.
So once you've done that, once you've dragged this application to this representation of the Applications Folder it might take a few seconds or even a minute to actually bring the entire file over to make a copy of it in your Applications Folder. At that point what you should do is Close this window here and in the Finder find under Locations this disk image and simply Eject it by clicking the button there. Once it is ejected and you've installed this file you can now go to your Downloads Folder and there's that disk image and you can get rid of this file. You don't need it anymore. You've taken the only thing that was actually in it and correctly installed it in your Applications Folder. So you can just Drag this to the Trash. Now it is in the Trash and the next time you empty the Trash it will delete that. Or in the Finder you can go to Finder and Empty Trash to do that right now. 
Here's another example. Another browser. The Firefox browser. So if I click Download then it is going to start downloading this file and will put it in my Downloads Folder or wherever you've set your default download location for Safari to be. Once that's done you can go to your Downloads Folder and the same thing here. If you double-click on it it's going to mount this drive and you can see it now listed under Locations. This one is just called Firefox. In this case the developers have chosen to give it a dark background to put some text back here. There's the app itself. They have even put a little separate label down below. Here's their link to the Applications Folder. They did a cute little curvy arrow too instead of just a straight one. But the action for you is the same. You don't run it here. You Drag and Drop and then it will copy this file to the Applications Folder. Then you can close this. You can Eject that drive. You can throw away that disk image. 
Here's a third example. This is the popular text editing tool BBEdit. We can download it like this and then it is going to download here. When it is done you can go to it. There's another disk image. Double-click to open and now you've got the application here. You've got the representation of the Application Folder, you've got the arrow, all the standard things. In this case they give you a little bit more instruction. So it is a little more obvious what to do. Just drag this to here and it places a copy of the app in your Applications Folder. 
So I think one of the reasons people are confused about this is because it seems like you might need to do more to install an app. Sometimes you do. Sometimes you get apps that have a full installer that walk you through step-by-step and they may install the application in the Application Folder and may actually install additional components as well. Most modern apps today don't need anything except the Application itself. There aren't additional components that need to be installed in the Library or anything like that. That's why this very simple installation process is possible. But, in fact, even two decades ago this was a popular installation option for a lot of Mac Apps. 
So I hope you found this useful or at least it answers a question that you may have been curious about. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 7 Responses to “How Many Mac Third-Party App Installs Work”

Bill

2 weeks ago

I'm surprised you didn't show an example of an Open source download.

Gary Rosenzweig

Bill: Whether an app is open source doesn't matter. It can use this same process or something else.

Bent Tjørnemark

1 week ago

I found it very useful. Now I understand a concept, which I have met before without really understanding what was going on. Thanks.

Gary, what I mean is the range of questions you get when you drag the .dmg to the applications folder and try to install the Open source app.

Bill: What sort of questions? There's really nothing about open source apps that would make the process any different than non-open source apps.

Try to install ***.

Bill: The app you mentioned works the same way as what I show here. You download it, get a disk image, then drag it to the Application folder alias. Perhaps you get some questions when you run it for the first time? Is that what you mean? Either way, it has nothing to do with whether it is an "open source" app or not.

How Many Mac Third-Party App Installs Work

Comments: 7 Responses to “How Many Mac Third-Party App Installs Work”

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