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Advanced Copying and Archiving with Ditto on macOS Tahoe

While the standard Unix cp command is available on macOS, Apple provides its own specialized tool called ditto. ditto is often preferred for backups and complex copy operations because it is designed to preserve macOS-specific metadata, resource forks, and permissions that standard Unix tools might discard.

Why Use Ditto?

  • Metadata Preservation: It preserves resource forks, HFS+ metadata, and extended attributes (ACLs).
  • Directory Merging: Unlike cp, ditto merges source directories into the destination. If the destination folder exists, ditto adds new files to it and updates existing ones, rather than replacing the folder entirely.
  • Archiving: It can create and extract compressed archives (ZIP, CPIO).

Basic Copying

The syntax is straightforward: ditto [source] [destination].

ditto SourceFolder DestinationFolder

If DestinationFolder does not exist, it is created. If it does exist, ditto merges the contents of SourceFolder into it.

Verbose Mode

To see exactly what is being copied, use the -V flag.

ditto -V ~/Projects/MyApp /Volumes/BackupDrive/MyApp

Creating Archives (ZIP)

ditto is an excellent tool for creating .zip archives via the terminal because it strips out unnecessary macOS system files (like __MACOSX folders) when used correctly, or preserves them when needed.

To create a standard ZIP archive:

ditto -c -k --sequesterRsrc --keepParent SourceFolder archive.zip
  • -c: Create an archive.
  • -k: Use PKZip format (standard .zip).
  • --sequesterRsrc: Preserve macOS metadata (resource forks) safely.
  • --keepParent: Includes the parent folder name inside the zip (so unzipping doesn't explode files everywhere).

Extracting Archives

You can also use ditto to unzip files.

ditto -x -k archive.zip /path/to/destination
  • -x: Extract.
  • -k: PKZip format.

Copying with Ownership (Sudo)

When backing up user data or system files, you often want to preserve the original file ownership.

sudo ditto -V /Users/john /Volumes/Backup/john

This ensures that files owned by "john" remain owned by "john" on the backup drive.

For more on general terminal usage, refer to Getting Started with macOS Tahoe.

Created: March 17, 2026 • Last Modified: February 24, 2026