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1. How To View Hidden Library Folder On Mac Iphone
2. How To See Hidden Library Folder On Mac
3. Show Hidden Library Mac
4. How To Open Hidden Library Folder On Mac

Updates

Some troubleshooting procedures require you to navigate to and view a hidden folder on Mac. You can access the Library folder with the Go To Folder command or from the Terminal app. Access the Library folder in Finder: In Finder, choose Go Go To Folder In the Go To The Folder field, enter /library. Jul 25, 2011  In Lion, your personal Library folder, at the root level of your Home folder, is gone. Actually, it's still there, but it's hidden. Here are a slew of ways to access it or, if you prefer, unhide it. 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”.

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. May 01, 2019  All Mac systems contain hidden files and folders. These are often preceded by a full stop or a slash, and are kept out of sight of the user either to. How to Show Hidden Files on a Mac - MacRumors. Access Hidden Library Menu Option On Mac. Left-click your mouse anywhere on the screen of your Mac. This will reveal the Go Option in the top menu bar of your Mac. Next, click on the Go option in the top menu-bar of your Mac. While you are still on the Go option, press and hold the Option.

January 26th 2018: Added shortcut method available on macOS Sierra keyboard.

September 22nd 2016: Method of showing/hiding hidden files tested and working on macOS Sierra.

December 22nd 2015: Method of showing/hiding hidden files tested and working on Mac OS X El Capitan.

It seems like every day I search Google for the command to show hidden files on Mac OS X, not to mention Googling for the command to then hide those hidden files a few minutes later.

Today I decided to make a short and easy to remember alias to speed up the process. All I need do now is type showFiles and hideFiles whenever I need to show/hide OS X’s hidden files. Here’s how you can do it too.

The Quickest Way to Show/Hide Hidden Files

Since the release of macOS Sierra, when in Finder, it is now possible to use the shortcut:

Press once to show hidden files and again to hide them. If you’re using a version earlier than macOS Sierra, see Show/Hide Hidden Files using Terminal Aliases to setup a toggle command via terminal.

Thanks to Guido Schlabitz for making me aware of this new shortcut.

Show/Hide Hidden Files the Long Way

The long way to show hidden Mac OS X files is as follows:

1. Open Terminal found in Finder > Applications > Utilities
2. In Terminal, paste the following: defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES
3. Press return
4. Hold the ‘Option/alt’ key, then right click on the Finder icon in the dock and click Relaunch.

Relaunch Finder by right clicking the Finder Icon whilst holding the ‘Option/alt’ key

This will show all hidden files. To hide them again, follow the same steps but replace the Terminal command with:

It’s not the longest set of instructions or the biggest command to commit to memory but if you’re doing this a lot, it’s worth spending a few minutes now to save yourself a lot more time in the future.

Show/Hide Hidden Files using Terminal Aliases

A Terminal alias is a name or shortcut for one or multiple commands. Using an easy to remember alias, we can turn the above four step process into just one.

An alias can be made temporarily (just for the use of one terminal session) or permanently. As we want this to be a shortcut used now and in the future, let’s make it permanent:

1. Open Terminal found in Finder > Applications > Utilities
2. In Terminal, paste the following: sudo nano ~/.bash_profile
3. Enter your Mac’s administration password if required, then hit return
4. At the bottom of the open .bash_profile file, paste the following: alias showFiles='defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES; killall Finder /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app'

5. Below that, paste the following: alias hideFiles='defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles NO; killall Finder /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app'

6. Press ctrl + O and hit return to save the file
7. Press ctrl + X to exit the file and return to the command line
8. In Terminal, paste the following: source ~/.bash_profile to refresh your profile and make the aliases available

Now when you want to show hidden files, all you need type in Terminal is showFiles, then hideFiles when you want to hide them.

If you want to modify the behaviour or alias names, let’s take a closer look at the commands you just added:

alias tells Terminal we’re adding a new alias.

showFiles is the name of the alias. Change this to what you wish.

We then give the alias two commands. The first being:

This is the command to show hidden files and is ended with a semi-colon ; so we can then use the second command:

This will relaunch the Finder (to replicate the step of holding the ‘Option/alt’ key then right clicking the Finder icon in the dock).

Conclusion

With the aliases set up, all you need do in the future is type showFiles and hideFiles to show and hide Mac OS X’s hidden files respectively.

Depending on your Internet speed, the time it takes for you to see your photos and videos on all of your devices and iCloud.com might vary. When you have iOS 11 or later, your library can update over cellular too. .

Aliases can be used to speed up your interaction with the Terminal. Set up an alias for navigating to your most used directories, to commit to a GitHub repo and so on.

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.

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?

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:

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 View Hidden Library Folder On Mac Iphone

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.

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.

How To See Hidden Library Folder On Mac

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.

Show Hidden Library Mac

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.

How To Open Hidden Library Folder On Mac

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