Your Mac has a secret. Thousands of them in fact, in the form of hidden files and folders lurking on its hard drive or SSD. Don’t worry, though. These files and folders are all supposed to be there. In fact, many of them are essential.
Many of these files are in your Mac’s main Library folder or in the ~/Library folder, which is in your User folder. Both these Library folders are hidden, but inside them are folders and files that hold things like preferences for apps.
Jan 12, 2020 How to Make the Library Visible Permanently. Launch Terminal, located in /Applications/Utilities. Enter the following command at the Terminal prompt: Press Return. Once the command executes, you can quit Terminal. The Library folder will now be visible in the Finder. Should you ever wish to set. Dec 12, 2016 If you don’t need to constantly show the /Library folder on the Mac, you can just access it when needed by using the “Go” menu: From the Finder of Mac OS, pull down the “Go” menu and hold down the SHIFT key Choose “Library” from the drop down list.
Feb 10, 2019 The supported method is the same as it's been for several versions of macOS: open your home folder, set it to list or or column view, then open view options, and check the box to show Library.
In this article, we’ll tell you how you can view hidden files on your Mac and make your Library folder visible.
Dec 27, 2016 There are multiple ways to access to the User Library folder in macOS: Open the Finder from the Dock, pull down the Go menu and hold down the Shift key. In a Finder Window, hit Command+Shift+L keys together to jump to the /Library directory. In the Finder, go to the Safari menu on the top bar. Nov 03, 2013 From OSX 10.9 Mavericks, 10.8 Mountain Lion and 10.7 Lion, the /Library and /Library are hidden from the Finder – to show these directories in the GUI, launch Terminal from Applications/Utilities and run the command below with sudo and enter your admin password when requested: sudo chflags nohidden /Library/ /Library/.
Transferring itunes library from pc to new mac. If not, download and install the latest iTunes.Step 3: Choose the content you will like to transfer from your iTunes library.Step 4: From the left side bar of your iTunes, drag the content, and drop it on iPhone.
The hidden files are a throwback to macOS’ Unix roots. In fact, the convention of naming them starting with a “.” comes from Unix. For that reason, you can’t use a “.” at the start of a regular file name, otherwise OS X will hide it.
The files themselves contain data like access rights and privileges for files and folders, application support files, and preferences.
There are a number of reasons files and folders are hidden. Mostly, though, it’s because they contain data critical to the smooth running of your Mac and that you shouldn’t interfere with. In addition, there’s no real reason for most users to see or access them. Also, if they were all visible, your Mac would look horribly cluttered.
Before you make your Mac show hidden files, it’s important to remember they’ve been hidden for a reason. The data they contain could cause havoc if you delete or alter it and don’t know what you’re doing.
If your goal in viewing, for example ~/Library is so you can manually delete application support files for a program you’ve uninstalled, consider using a dedicated uninstaller like CleanMyMac X. That will make it easy to remove all the files associated with an application with one click. You can download CleanMyMac X for free here.
CleanMyMac X will also allow you to get rid of all the hidden files you no longer need. Many of these files are created and used then not needed anymore. They just sit there clogging up your hard drive. CleanMyMac X scans your Mac, identifies this system junk and allows you to quickly and easily get rid of it, potentially several gigabytes of disk space.
If you still want to view hidden files on your Mac, you need to go to the Finder and do the following:
There are a couple of methods for making your ~/Library folder visible. Here’s the simplest:
Alternatively, do this to view your Library folder:
With both these methods, your Library folder will disappear again when you close the Finder window. It’s easy enough to run through the steps above again to make it visible again when you need to, but if you want it permanently accessible, there are a couple of ways to do it.
The quickest is to drag the Library folder to the Finder’s sidebar. That will create a shortcut to it that will persist. If you want to keep ~/Library visible but don’t want it clogging up the sidebar in Finder windows, do this:
If you’re feeling particularly adventurous, you can use the Terminal command line interface to view hidden files and folders. Here’s how to do it:
To hide the files again, repeat the above steps, but replace ‘true’ with ‘false’ at the end of step 2.
Now that you know how to view hidden files and folders on your Mac, you may be wondering how you can hide other files or folders, to keep them away from prying eyes. There are a number of third-party applications and utilities that offer to do this for you, but you can do it yourself in Terminal, like this:
The file or folder you dragged onto the Terminal window will now be hidden. To see it again, use one of the methods described above to see hidden files.
To make the file visible permanently again, use the steps above, but in step 2 type: chflags nohidden
As you can see, viewing hidden files and folders on your Mac is very straightforward. There are a number of ways to do it, and you can make them visible temporarily or permanently.
However, just because you can view hidden files, doesn’t mean you should — the files are usually hidden because accidentally deleting them or altering them could cause chaos on your Mac. So, while it’s fine to have a peek, don’t do anything with the hidden files unless you know what you’re doing.
If you want to declutter your Mac or uninstall applications, use a dedicated application like CleanMyMac X. It will safely remove all useless files, add-ons, broken login items, caches, large and old files you didn't know about. Most likely, you won't even need to look for hidden files — CleanMyMac will do all the job for you.
We also showed that many of those files are stored in Library folders, including the one in your User folder, ~/Library. That folder is hidden by default, but you can view it or make it permanently visible using the techniques described above.
Click here to return to the 'Permanently Unhide Library' hint |
A simple thing I did was to unhide the Library folder and then drag it into my Sidebar. Even if an update hides it again, it's just one click away.
Or make an alias of the '~/Library' folder called '~/Library .'
I thought this was a big deal until I actually got Lion and found that option-clicking on the 'Go' Menu item it was there in the list. that's easy enough for me.
This should be the hint.
I simply can't imagine that a person needs to access that folder often enough to justify un-hiding it. You can easily access the Library when you need it by holding 'option' and choosing Library from the Finder's Go menu.
As a software developer, I definitely need immediate access to this folder, preferable in the way I have always had access to it, by simply double-clicking the folder.
This is interesting. I made my Library folder visible when I first installed Lion, and it has stayed that way through every update. I can't remember what method I used though.
Here's a launchd plist that will do the same thing, but without the need for AppleScript, login items, etc. Just drop it in /Library/LaunchDaemons and set the permissions properly.
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC '-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN' 'http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd'>
<plist version='1.0'>
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>local.library.nohidden</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/usr/bin/chflags</string>
<string>nohidden</string>
<string>/Users/*/Library</string>
</array>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>
<key>EnableGlobbing</key>
<true/>
<key>StandardErrorPath</key>
<string>/dev/null</string>
</dict>
</plist>
Using the Option-Go menu is fine for the occasional use, but that doesn't work in File dialogs. VERY irritating that they reset this flag for updates or even feel the need to hide it in the first place.
All I do is run the command: $chflags nohidden ~/Library/ There is no need for //usr/bin/ (as mentioned in the previous hint) Then, browse to the folder in the Finder, drag it over into the sidebar, then do the command again. Only this time making it hidden: $chflags hidden ~/Library/ Then, it won't be visible in my ~ folder anymore, but it will still be perfectly accessible from the sidebar.