revealing the hidden Library

With OSX Lion, Apple decided to make the user Library folder a hidden item. If you don’t know what this folder is for or never use it, that’s probably a good thing. However, for many others, it’s a bit annoying. Here’s a couple of tips for viewing your hidden Library folder.

1. See it only when you need it
If you only need infrequent access to your user/library folder, you might as well leave it hidden and use the ‘Go’ menu in the Finder menubar to get to it.

Hold down the option key while viewing the Menu, and ‘Library’ will appear in the menu list. Release the option key and you’ll see it magically disappear.

2. Change its ‘hidden’ folder status
However, if you want to have your Library folder permanently visible, you need to change its ‘hidden’ status in Terminal.

To do that, open up the Terminal App (in Applications > Utilities) and copy/paste the following command:

chflags nohidden ~/Library

Then press ‘Return’ and quit Terminal. You should now see your Library appear in Finder when you view your Home/User folder.

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