How do I rename the Downloads folder (in Lion)?
Here's a way you can do it without actually creating a new folder or mucking around with symlinks.
In an editor like TextWrangler or BBEdit, open this file:
Inside, you'll see stuff like this:
This is how the system knows how to translate folder names. Since this is the "en.lproj" ("English language project"), you can alter the values in this file to be what you want. (Alternatively, if you run Mac OS X in Spanish, you'd use the version of the file inside the "es.lproj" folder) So, for example, you might change:
To be:
Save the file (you'll probably have to type in an administrator password to do so), and then pop open Terminal and type . When Finder finishes relaunching, you'll see that your Downloads folder now has the name "Downloaded Stuff".
This is the much safer way to do it, because some apps may be hardcoding a path to the downloads folder as and then expanding the tilde. Depending on what they're doing, this may or may not work with symlinks (meaning the apps may not work properly). With the method above, you haven't changed the folder at all. It's still called "Downloads", but it just gets shown as something else. (However, if you your home directory in Terminal, it will still show "Downloads" and not "Downloaded Stuff")
The downside of this approach is that you're altering a system file, which means this could get reverted when you update your system, etc.
(Source: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20020926061746306)
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