# Finder folders to Markdown links in Bear

> Want a link from a Bear note that opens a Finder folder? Your Mac does all the work for you: just copy/paste.

I was just trying to get a list of Finder folders as a bullet list in a Bear note. (I'm finally upgrading my own [LAS](/las/) to v2 and am making it super neat as I go.)

I've known for a while that you can do this:

1. Select some folders in the Finder. Typically I find myself shift-selecting a whole range, e.g. 20 dated subfolders within another folder.
2. Cmd+C to **copy**.
3. Now if you Cmd+V to **paste**, and you paste into a text field, you'll get the _titles_ of the folders.

What you get depends where you're pasting. If I do that into this Visual Studio Code window, I get a long file path. If I do it in to a TextEdit window in the default **rich text** view, it tries to paste the contents of the folders!

I have TextEdit set to open a **plain text** window by default vs. RTF. That's **Settings > New Document (tab) > Format > Plain text**. And now when I paste there, I get a really simple list of the folder names.

## Paste to Bear gets you a Markdown link

If you paste into Bear (or, I presume, other Markdown-compatible apps), you get a Markdown link that, when clicked, _opens the folder in Finder!_

That's brilliant. Just what I want for my JDex: now it tells me what's in my filesystem folders, and I can just click to go there.

## Note: only with 2+ folders

[Robert points out on Mastodon](https://mastodon.nl/@ro/115711039014812760) that this only works if you have 2 or more folders selected. If you 'copy' a single folder, that will paste as a massive blue folder icon!

There's a lot more going on when you press 'copy' than you thought...

## A video

Here this is as a quick video.

<div style="padding:75% 0 0 0;position:relative;">
  <iframe
    src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/1178136703?badge=0&amp;autopause=0&amp;player_id=0&amp;app_id=58479"
    frameborder="0"
    allow="autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; web-share"
    referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin"
    style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"
    title="22.00.0174A-Finder-to-Bear--0-717x874"
  ></iframe>
</div>
<script src="https://player.vimeo.com/api/player.js"></script>