How am I able to export all of my applications' names on my Mac into a CSV or TXT file?

In a Terminal:

mdfind kMDItemKind="Application" > ~/Desktop/apps.txt

This will create a file named apps.txt on your Desktop, containing the full paths for everything that OS X considers to be an "Application" on your system.

This is might be a lot more than you want. You can limit the search to a given folder by adding -onlyin <dir>, so:

mdfind -onlyin /Applications kMDItemKind="Application" > ~/Desktop/apps.txt

will limit the search to the /Applications folder (and its subfolders). Note that you might also have apps under ~/Applications, i.e., inside your Home folder.


  1. Within Finder, open the application folder
  2. Select All (command+A) and then Copy (command+C)
  3. Open a new document in TextEdit
  4. Now go to Edit > Paste and Match Style (or use optionshiftcommand+V)
  5. Save the text file