In attempting to make life easier for their customers, and to help “fool-proof” Mac OS X Lion, Apple has made some user-level changes. One such change is that Lion now defaults to hiding the user’s library directory. While this may be best for inexperience users, some of us want or even need access to the ~/Library/ directory. Here’s how you can get it back:
Returning the user library directory is a matter of running a simple terminal command. To make the change, simply fire up Terminal from your Utilities folder, and run the following command:
chflags nohidden ~/Library/
Nov 23, 2012 In finder, click on 'Go' in the top menu bar, hold Command + Option to reveal Library in the menu items. You can also press Command + Shift + G, type in or copy and paste /Library to the input. Aug 25, 2011 Mountain Lion is king of the OS X jungle. Easily show the user Library folder in Lion. This became all the more important after Apple introduced the Mac App Store. Files inside the Library.
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After you successfully run the command, it may be necessary to force a relaunch of Finder before you are able to actually see the Library folder that you just revealed. You can restart Finder by entering an additional Terminal command:
killall Finder && open /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app
You will now be able to see, navigate, and make changes to the contents of the ~/Library/ directory. If you decide that you don’t need or want access to the Library directory, you can hide it again by entering the following command, thus returning the setting back to default:
- Dec 12, 2016 This is a simple settings change that will cause MacOS Finder to always show the Library folder in the user home: From the Mac OS Finder, go to the Users home folder; Pull down the “View” menu and choose “View Options” Choose “Show Library Folder” in the settings options for the User home folder.
- Jun 10, 2015 Making the /Library Folder Visible in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion 1. Open Terminal, either from the OS X Spotlight or by navigating to 'Applications - Utilities.' On Terminal, type open /Library and press Enter which will open up the folder in Finder.
- In Mountain Lion your Library; which contains various useful folders such as your preferences, application support and many other files and folders, is hidden within Mountain Lion. This is not normally a problem since you really don’t use it that frequently.
- Oct 28, 2013 Show the Users Library Folder Permanently in OS X Mavericks. From the OS X Finder, open a new window and go to the users Home folder (hit Command+Shift+H to jump to Home instantly) Pull down the “View” menu and select “Show View Options” (or.
- OS X Mountain Lion is available now as a download from the Mac App Store. Just click the Mac App Store icon in your dock, purchase Mountain Lion, and follow the onscreen instructions to install it. Mountain Lion will not only make your Mac work better, it also makes your Mac work even better with your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
chflags hidden ~/Library
And once again, you’ll want to repeat the command for killing and restarting Finder in order to finalize the changes.
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The Library folder, at the root level of your OS X Mountain Lion hard drive, is like a public library; it stores items available to everyone who logs into an account on this Mac.
There are actually three Library folders on your hard drive: the one at the root level of your OS X disk, a second inside the root-level System folder, and a third in your Home folder.
What’s that you say? You don’t see a Library folder inside your Home folder? Well it’s like this: In versions of OS X earlier than OS X Lion (10.7), you would have seen a folder named Library between the Downloads and Movies folders in your Home folder.
But that was then, and this is now. In OS X Mountain Lion, the Home Library folder is hidden from view to protect you from yourself.
Leave the /System/Library folder alone.Don’t move, remove, or rename it, or do anything within it. It’s the nerve center of your Mac. In other words, you should never have to touch this third Library folder. You find a bunch of folders inside the Library folder at root level (the “public” Library folder). Most of them contain files that you never need to open, move, or delete.
By and large, the public Library subfolder that gets the most use is the Fonts folder, which houses many of the fonts installed on the Mac. For the most part, fonts can be made available in one of two ways:
To everyone who uses the Mac: If that’s the case, they’re stored here in the Fonts folder.
To a single user: In this case, you place the fonts in the user’s Library folder (the one in the user’s Home folder).
Some other public Library subfolders that you might use or add to are the iMovie, iTunes, iPhoto, and iDVD folders (where you put plug-ins for those programs); the Scripts folder (which houses AppleScripts accessible to all users); and the Desktop Pictures folder (where you can place pictures to be used as Desktop backgrounds).
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Don’t remove, rename, or move any files or folders in any of your Library folders unless you’re sure of what you’re doing and why. OS X is very picky about folders in its Libraries being in the proper place and bear the proper name. You probably shouldn’t remove, rename, or move applications installed by Mountain Lion in the Applications folder.
Note: Under most circumstances, you won’t actually add items to or remove items from folders in this Library yourself. Software installers usually do the heavy lifting for you by placing all their little pieces in the appropriate Library folders. You shouldn’t need to touch this Library often, if ever. That said, knowing what these folders are — and who can access their contents — might come in handy down the road a piece.
If your Mac is set up for multiple users, only users with administrator (admin) privileges can put stuff in the public (root-level) Library folder.