Wednesday, March 28, 2012

make library folder visible in lion

The OS X user-level Library folder (/Users/<your short name>/Library, or ~/Library for short) is hidden by default in Lion. 

The Simplest Option
If you're in the Finder, hold down Option (Alt) and hit the "Go" menu in the menubar. As long as you're holding down the Option key, the Library will appear in the list of locations in the drop-down. Select it and a Finder window will open up on your Library folder.
From the Terminal
The Library isn't hidden from the Terminal; you can see it and access it just like normal. It's worth remembering, though, the OS X open command, which will open applications, files and — get this — Finder windows on folders. So, if you're in the Terminal and want a Finder window on your Library, all you need to type is:open ~/Library

…hit return, and a Finder window will appear.

Reverting To A Non-Hidden Library

While still in the Terminal, try having a look at your Library, including the flags set on the directory, like this:

alexLap$ ls -lOd ~/Library/ drwx------@ 74 alex staff hidden 2516 18 Jul 15:26 /Users/alex/Library/ 

And there's the secret: The Library has the "hidden" flag set.

To un-hide the Library, change the hidden flag with this command:

chflags nohidden ~/Library 

You may need to restart (at least the Finder) for this flag change to take effect. Also, I can't guarantee that you won't need to re-do that every time there's an OS X version update…

That's all the ways I can think of to access the Library in Lion, for now!


enjoy this experience with Lion

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