On a Mac with a trackpad or an Apple mouse with one mouse button, click the Finder window with both fingers to perform a right-click. This will prompt a drop-down menu. Alternatively, you can hold the Control key and click the Finder window to perform a right-click. Click Show View Options. With the newer version's of Mac OS X Apple has made it more difficult to find the Library folder. In order to find the Library folder follow these steps: 1.) Open up a new Finder Window 2.) Click.
10.7: Un-hide the User Library folder | 18 comments | Create New Account
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I am getting 'permission denied'. I am the administrator so I don't understand why I am getting this.
You might have to sudo. On my Snow Leopard, I see that the directory is root:admin, so you shouldn't need to sudo, but you might as well try it anyway.
sudo did the trick. Thanks.
Alternatively, after opening the library folder, using the Go menu, you can drag the folder's icon in the title bar to the Dock, Tool Bar, and/or the Side Bar.
Let me rephrase for clarity: After opening '~/Library' using the 'Go...' menu, you can drag the proxy icon (the icon in the titlebar) to the sidebar, etc.
Freeware for that - allows you to temporarily (or permanently) hide / unhide files and folders. Basically, a GUI for those who don't want to mess with terminal. http://gotoes.org/sales/ShowHiddenFilesMacOSX/
That utility is for globally turning off and on the behaviour of hiding files. I don't have Lion yet, but I imagine by showing hidden files globally that way, you'd be able to Get Info on a file and turn off its individual visibility.
All you need to do, on a per use basis, is hold down the OPTION key while selecting GO from the FILE MENU; Library automagically appears in the list.
To save Snow Leopard users time: this doesn't work in Snow Leopard.
I tried it and got this result: dyld: shared cached file was build against a different libSystem.dylib, ignoring cache
This is a simple but important hint. Thank you.
What would be a good way to check visibility of a folder, so visibility can be toggled?
This works for toggling visibility of the user library folder. Is there a better way?
how do i install Quartz Composer? i can't find it in installer.
Works great, thanks for the hint. I did run into one hiccup though. I think this was just a random isolated instance but just in case anyone else gets weird behavior, repair your permissions. I changed the permissions of my Library folder and my downloads folder would appear empty (it wasn't empty before) and random files ranging from resource folders to language files and pretty much anything else you can think of was constantly appearing and disappearing. I performed this hint on a fresh install of lion and it worked perfectly. End result: Hint works as described, if you run into weird behavior just repair your permissions and try again.
A pure AppleScript way to toggle user library folder visibility:
Thanks! I've been looking for this folder for weeks.
It's worth mentioning that installing the system update from 10.7.2 to 10.7.3 resets the user Library to be hidden again, so you'll need to run this command after any system update.
When you launch Terminal, you're in your user home folder anyway, so you only need to type chflags nohidden Library The tilde and slash are superfluous.