How to Install Tree on MacOS
In this article I will show you how to install the tree command line tool on MacOS.
Step 1. Install brew
If you don't have Homebrew (brew) installed, follow the instructions here:
Update brew
Before installing tree, it's a good idea to update brew first.
Open up a terminal window and run the following command:
brew update
You can also run brew upgrade
to update other packages. But that's not necessary right now and it may take a while.
Step 2. Install tree
Once brew is installed and updated, you can install tree on a Mac with this command.
brew install tree
Step 3. Run tree
To run tree, do the following:
- Switch to any folder in a Terminal window
- Run tree in the current folder like this:
tree
To make it more interesting, change to a folder with subfolders
Step 4. View by folder name
To view a folder by name, append the path as an argument like this:
tree ~/Documents
Step 5. View hidden files
To view hidden files, use the -a flag like this:
This example assumes you have Rust installed - you can instead pick any folder with a hidden file like .gitignore or the .git folder.
For this example, create a temporary Rust project:
cargo new rust-temp
- View only visible files:
tree rust-temp
rust-temp
├── Cargo.toml
└── src
└── main.rs
- Include hidden files and folders
tree -a rust-temp
rust-temp
├── .git
│ ├── HEAD
│ ├── config
│ ├── description
│ ├── hooks
│ │ └── README.sample
│ ├── info
│ │ └── exclude
│ ├── objects
│ │ ├── info
│ │ └── pack
│ └── refs
│ ├── heads
│ └── tags
├── .gitignore
├── Cargo.toml
└── src
└── main.rs
Step 6. Tree help
To see what else tree can do, use the --help flag:
tree --help
Conclusion
In this article you learned how to install the tree command line tool on a Mac.
Now you have a useful way of viewing and even documenting the structure of your project folders.