Back in OS X Lion and then again in OS X Mountain Lion, Apple hid access to the user Library folder to prevent neophyte OS X users from messing around in the areas of the file system that could cause some damage to their Macs.
That’s fine, of course, but it took a lot of messing around in the Terminal to get that access back, and who remembers Terminal commands from last year? Not us, that’s for sure.
Luckily, Mavericks has a much easier way to turn Library access on.
Open a Finder window and then navigate to the Home folder. That’s the one represented by the cute little house icon over in the sidebar. If you don’t see it, click on something like the Desktop or Documents folder, and then Command-click on the title bar of the window. You’ll get a drop-down menu that shows the file path of the current folder, which–if you’ve picked a folder from your Home directory–will show the Home folder somewhere in the list. Click on it to go to the Home folder.
Now, once you’re there, hit Command-J to bring up the View Options panel. You’ll see a checkbox to “Show Library Folder” somewhere in that panel, depending on the view your Finder window is in. Simply check it to show your User account’s Library folder. Now you can go in there and mess around to your heart’s content.
Update: Several readers point out that–as of OS X Mountain Lion, you can Option-Click on the Go menu in the Finder and access the Library folder, as well.
Rob LeFebvre is an Anchorage, Alaska-based writer and editor who has contributed to various tech, gaming and iOS sites, including 148Apps, Creative Screenwriting, Shelf-Awareness, VentureBeat, and Paste Magazine. Feel free to find Rob on Twitter @roblef, and send him a cookie once in a while; he’ll really appreciate it.
6 responses to “Mavericks Makes It Way Easier To Access Your Library Folder [OS X Tips]”
What wrong with clicking the Go menu in Finder and then pressing the Option key and clicking Library? It works no matter what folder you’re viewing at the moment.
What’s wrong with just making the folder not hidden? That works without creating extra steps for yourself, no matter what folder you’re viewing or whether you have Finder in focus or whether you remember the keystroke, etc.
chflags nohidden ~/Library
killall Finder
Done. Permanently. Or at least, until the next version of OS X.
It’s nice of them to offer this option to bring back the user’s library folder, but what I don’t understand is why they would hide the user’s library folder, but leave /System/Library and /Library on the root level of the hard drive visible. Someone mucking around in those two locations can cause far more damage than in the user’s library.
That’s a good option for occasional library folder access, but some of us want it visible all the time. To each, his own I guess. My point is that they should have hidden the other library folders instead of the one that belongs to a user’s account.
Thank you so much! Ages searching on Google couldn’t answer my question until I found this and the clear instructions. You are now my ‘go to’ as I learn this bloody Apple after 30yrs of Microsoft!
The “Cult of Mac” doesn’t remember two simple Terminal commands? That’s pretty sad.
chflags nohidden ~/Library
killall Finder
That, to me, is way easier than remembering a bunch of silly tricks like “hold Option when you open the Go menu” or “hit Cmd+J blah, blah…” If you want the folder not to be hidden, why not just unhide it and be done with it?