Nov 06, 2017  How to Show (Unhide) the Library Folder on Mac. Rafiki Technology on November 6, 2017. To display your Library folder in your user home folder, In Finder, go to your user’s home folder (usually similar to your username on the computer), then while you have that open in Finder. How To: Unhide User Library Folder Mac OS 10.9 Mavericks. Open a window in the Finder. Select you user folder (mine: joes10) or if your User Folder is not in the sidebar, while in the Finder hit ⇧⌘H to open directly to your User Folder. Select menu: View Show View Options or hit ⌘J. Check “Show Library Folder” in the View Options window.

1. Where Is My Library Folder
2. Mac Find Users Folder
3. How To Unhide The Library Folder On Mac
4. How To Unhide Library Folder In Mac
5. How To Unhide Files In Windows 10

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.

Problem to be Solved You’ve got a great backup of your OSX computer, and you need to get something back from the Library folder, say something in the Application Support subfolder. These instructions will show you how to do unhide the User Library folder on the external drive or even on a second Mac. You just need to do the following: Open the Finder. Go to your Macintosh HD folder (access this from Devices in the left column) Hold down Cmd + Shift +. (dot) All the hidden files will become visible. Hold down Cmd + Shift +. (dot) a second time to hide the files again.

• Now let’s try to hide a folder and all files in it. For instance, I’ve created a folder called ‘My Secret Files’. Now we can try to click the plus button at the bottom of Hider 2 window and select the files on your Mac that need to be added to your secret vault. After that, press.
• Temporary access to the hidden User Library. Go to the Finder (or desktop). Hold the Option key on your keyboard, and click the Go menu at the top of the screen. With the Go menu open, you'll notice that pressing and releasing Option will display or hide the Library choice in this menu.
• Jul 11, 2014  In the normal day-to-day course of events, you don't need to worry about the Library folder or any other hidden folders and that's fine because Library folder its hidden away from you by default.

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.

In this article, we’ll tell you how you can view hidden files on your Mac and make your Library folder visible.

What are the hidden files on Mac?

Where Is My Library Folder

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.

How to view hidden files on Mac

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:

1. Open a new Finder window and click on the name of your Mac under ‘Devices’ in the sidebar.
2. Click on Macintosh HD, or whatever you’ve called your startup drive if you’ve renamed it.
3. Press Command-Shift-. (period). You should now see lots of files and folders who’s name starts with “.” become visible.
4. To re-hide the files and folders, hold down Command-Shift-. again.

How to view your Mac’s ~/Library folder

There are a couple of methods for making your ~/Library folder visible. Here’s the simplest:

1. Click on the Finder in the Dock.
2. Open a new Finder window and navigate to your user folder (Tip: if it’s not in the sidebar, go to the Finder menu, choose Preferences, click Sidebar and check the box next to your Home folder)
3. Click on the Go menu.
4. Hold down the Option (Alt) key.
5. You should see that in the dropdown menu, Library appears below Home. Click on it.

Alternatively, do this to view your Library folder:

Mac Find Users Folder

1. Click on the Finder in the Dock.
2. Click on the Go menu and choose Go to Folder.
3. In the window that opens, type “~/Library”

How To Unhide The Library Folder On Mac

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:

1. Click on the Finder in the Dock.
2. Click on the View menu and choose Show View Options.
3. Check the box labelled Show Library Folder at the bottom of the window.

How to make macOS show hidden files using Terminal

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:

1. Open Terminal from the Utilities folder in Applications, or by searching for it using Spotlight. You can also use the Go menu in the Finder to go directly to the Utilities folder.
2. Type, or copy and paste, this command: defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles true
3. Press Return
4. Type: killall Finder

To hide the files again, repeat the above steps, but replace ‘true’ with ‘false’ at the end of step 2.

How to hide any file or folder using Terminal

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:

1. Launch Terminal.
2. Type: chflags hidden
3. Press the spacebar.
4. Drag the file or folder you want to hide from the Finder onto the Terminal window.
5. You’ll see the path to the file or folder displayed in Terminal after the command you typed.
6. Hit Return to execute the command.

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.

How To Unhide Library Folder In Mac

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.

These might also interest you:

You may need to access content in the user Library folder to troubleshoot problems with your Adobe applications. The user Library folder is hidden by default in macOS X 10.7 and later releases. Use one of the following methods to make the user Library content visible.

Hold down the Alt (Option) key when using the Go menu. The user Library folder is listed below the current user's home directory.

How To Unhide Files In Windows 10

Note: After you open the Library folder, you can drag the Library icon from the top of that window to the Dock, sidebar, or toolbar to make it readily accessible.

This can happen whenever you install a new app, update an app, or upgrade your copy of OS X. You could install a new photo editing app, and it could accidentally set the permissions on a folder shared by another app incorrectly, causing the dreaded bouncing Dock icon or an app simply failing to start or work. Why does my mac say closing the library when i click on photos. As mentioned above, a common problem found in the earlier versions of OS X is the file permissions being set incorrectly. All it takes is the installer to be coded incorrectly, and an app's permissions can be set incorrectly. It doesn’t even have to be the same app being updated.

For more information, explanations, and ideas, see 18 ways to view the ~/Library folder in Lion and Mountain Lion.

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