Uploaded September 2012 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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When working with files in Objective-C, we can specify the paths to them as follows:

NSString *path = @"/Users/pavel/file.txt";



However, the recommended way (by Apple engineers) to specify that is by using URL-s (Uniform Resource Locator).

The iOS SDK class that provides us urls manipulation is named NSURL, and it has a lot of class convenience methods that make developers' lives easier.
To create a NSURL object, we use the syntax:

NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:@"file:///Users/pavel/file.txt"];


Note that the way we specify the string is different from in "path" cases.
It should always have the "file" schema in front of it, than a colon, and 3 slashes.


If we want to create a NSURL object, providing a string as in path cases, we can use a NSURL method which allows us to do that:

NSURL *newUrl = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:@"/Users/pavel/Public/file.txt"];



To move files from one location to another using urls instead of paths, we should use:

[[NSFileManager defaultManager] moveItemAtURL:url toURL:newUrl error:nil];