Technology Tales

Grouping directories first in output from ls commands executed in terminal sessions on macOS and Linux

Published on 14^th February 2026 Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

This enquiry began with my seeing directories and files being sorted by alphabetical order without regard for type in macOS Finder. In Windows and Linux file managers, I am accustomed to directories and files being listed in distinct blocks, albeit within the same listings, with the former preceding the latter. What I had missed was that the ls command and its aliases did what I was seeing in macOS Finder, which perhaps is why the operating system and its default apps work like that.

Over to Linux

On the zsh implementation that macOS uses, there is no way to order the output so that directories are listed before files. However, the situation is different on Linux because of the use of GNU tooling. Here, the --group-directories-first switch is available, and I have started to use this on my own Linux systems, web servers as well as workstations. This can be set up in .bashrc or .bash_aliases like the following:

alias ls='ls --color=auto --group-directories-first'
alias ll='ls -lh --color=auto --group-directories-first'

Above, the --color=auto switch adds colour to the output too. Issuing the following command makes the updates available in a terminal session (~ is the shorthand for the home directory below):

source ~/.bashrc

Back to macOS

While that works well on Linux, additional tweaks are needed to implement the same on macOS. Firstly, you have to install Homebrew using this command (you may be asked for your system password to let the process proceed):

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

To make it work, this should be added to the .zshrc file in your home folder:

export PATH="/opt/homebrew/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin:$PATH"

Then, you need to install coreutils for GNU commands like gls (a different name is used to distinguish it from what comes with macOS) and adding dircolors gives you coloured text output as well:

brew install coreutils
brew install dircolors

Once those were in place, I found that adding these lines to the .zshrc file was all that was needed (note those extra g's):

alias ls='gls --color=auto --group-directories-first'
alias ll='gls -lh --color=auto --group-directories-first'

If your experience differs, they may need to be preceded with this line in the same configuration file:

eval "$(dircolors -b)"

The final additions then look like this:

export PATH="/opt/homebrew/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin:$PATH"
eval "$(dircolors -b)"
alias ls='gls --color=auto --group-directories-first'
alias ll='gls -lh --color=auto --group-directories-first'

Following those, issuing this command will make the settings available in your terminal session:

source ~/.zshrc

Closing Remarks

In summary, you have learned how to list directories before files, and not intermingled as is the default situation. For me, this discovery was educational and adds some extra user-friendliness that was not there before the tweaks. While we may be considering two operating systems and two different shells (bash and zsh), there is enough crossover to make terminal directory and file listing operations function consistently regardless of where you are working.