Removing the file:/// prefix from URL path

filePath.path is what you're looking for. You don't want to "remove file:///." You just want the path part of the URL.

Note that this will leave the first /. I guess you could remove that, but it's unclear why that would be a good idea, since it's part of the path. (If you're gluing this together with other strings that might end in /, it's better to use path methods like stringByAppendingPathComponent: to get rid of doubled-slashes.)