The Library Overseer Mac OS

Even though you may not have found your Library folder, the Mac OS X Library folder is not gone. The Library folder is simply hidden in newer releases of the Operating System. Up until the release of Lion (OS X 10.7), you could open your Home folder to access the Library folder. Jul 25, 2011 Inside your Home folder is a Library folder (/Library), accessible only to you, that’s used to store your personal application-support files and, in some cases, data. The files and folders in. Mac Os Library Developer Coresimulator Key Here’s a quick guide on how to clean junk files on Mac. We’ll go over types of junk you might have on your Mac and why it’s there, as well as ways of getting it removed.

Inside your home folder is a Library folder—commonly written in Unix syntax as ~/Library, which means “a folder named Library at the root level of your home folder.” This folder is accessible only to you, and it’s used to store your personal settings, application-support files, and, in some cases, data.

The files and folders in ~/Library are generally meant to be left alone, but if you’ve been using OS X for a while, chances are you’ve delved inside. Perhaps you wanted to tweak something using a tip from Macworld, Mac OS X Hints, or elsewhere on the Web. Or maybe a developer asked you to delete a preference file, or grab a log file, while troubleshooting a program. Whatever the case may have been, up until Lion (OS X 10.7), you simply opened your Home folder to access the Library folder.

But after upgrading to Lion, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, and yes even OS X 10.10 Yosemite, the first time you tried accessing your personal Library folder, you likely found…well, you didn’t find. The folder was gone.

The disappearing Library folder

At least, that’s how it appears. But rest assured, regardless of your version of OS X, your personal Library folder is right where it’s always been, at the root level of your Home folder. It’s just that, starting in Lion, and continuing in Mountain Lion, Mavericks, and Yosemite, Apple has made the folder invisible.

The reason for this move is presumably that people unfamiliar with the inner workings of OS X often open ~/Library and start rooting around, moving and deleting files, only to later discover that programs don’t work right, application settings are gone, or—worse—data is missing. This is the same reason Apple has always hidden the folders containing OS X’s Unix underpinnings: /bin, /sbin, /usr, and the like.

While I understand Apple’s motives here—I’ve had to troubleshoot more than a few Macs on which an inexperienced user has munged the contents of ~/Library—a user can have plenty of valid reasons for needing to access the personal Library folder. Luckily, as I mentioned, the folder is merely hidden, using a special file attribute called the hidden flag. You just need to know how to make the folder visible again.

The setting you need to know

If you’re still running Lion or Mountain Lion, making the ~/Library folder requires a little bit of work. (I came up with—no joke—19 ways to view the folder in Lion and Mountain Lion.) But in Mavericks and Yosemite, Apple has made the task much more convenient, providing an easily accessible setting for toggling the visibility of your user-level Library folder. Here’s how to use it:

Open your home folder (/Users/yourusername) in the Finder. Depending on your Finder settings, this may be as easy as simply opening a new Finder window. Otherwise, choose Home from the Finder’s Go menu (Go > Home); or press Shift-Command-H.

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Still in the Finder, choose View > Show View Options (or press Command-J).

Near the bottom of the resulting View-Options palette is a setting called Show Library Folder. Enable this option. Your Library folder is immediately visible.

Close the View-Options palette.

You can access this setting at any time to toggle the visibility of your personal Library folder. For example, Macworld senior contributor Joe Kissell has found that applying an OS X update can make the folder invisible, requiring you to manually make it visible again.

Now that the folder is visible, just remember to be careful—because, as I mentioned above, deleting or moving the wrong file(s) inside this folder could cause an application to misbehave, to lose its settings, or even to lose data.

1 0 likes 29,551 views Last modified Mar 12, 2021 11:09 AM

Moving files in Mac OS X is not as simple as it was in Mac OS 9 days (prior to 2004, not to be confused with the 2013 released Mac OS X 10.9), and is different from Windows as well.


Before deleting or moving any files you are uncertain of, be sure to make at least two backups of your critical data.


Files with a period as a prefix (i.e. .profile, and .DS_Store), should not be renamed or moved. These are files that are otherwise invisible in Mac OS X and help Mac OS X manage the system itself.


Don't delete or move mach files that appear when you double click the hard disk icon.

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User folders must have their name maintained if you expect to be able to use X again. So if you first setup your Mac OS X account on setup as JSmith, don't rename or move the JSmith folder from the Users folder. We'll assume your user folder here on in your Users folder is your JSmith folder for example purposes only.

Unix defines directories and subdirectories by /es. So when I say /Users/JSmith/Documents/, that means you double click hard drive, double click Users, Double click JSmith, and double click Documents folder to get there from Mac OS 9. In Mac OS X View by columns allows you to navigate folders by single clicking on them, but they maintain the same hierarchy.


Don't delete or move files within System and Library folders appearing when you first double click your hard disk. Don't delete or move .App files in your Applications folder, these are Mac OS X native applications.

Don't delete or move files in your /Users/JSmith/Documents or /Users/JSmith/Library folder. Be aware that by default Mac OS X may set itself to put your iTunes music in /Users/JSmith/Music though that can be changed in the preferences, and iPhoto in /Users/JSmith/Pictures/


You can freely move the contents of these files and folders about, though not necessarily their subfolders (unless you created the folder):

/Applications Mac OS 9 - though I would test to make sure the application works after moving it. If it doesn't then move it back.


/Documents



/Users/JSmith/Library/Favorites/



/Users/JSmith/Movies

/Users/JSmith/Sites

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/Users/JSmith/ (except its default subfolders)



Observing all these rules will prevent headaches in the future.

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Library

Additionally, you can safely delete Log files, but not the folders that own them. There is a nightly script that runs to delete them in Mac OS X as

long as you are in screen saver, but not always in Energy Saver, or they are deleted right after the machine wakes from sleep. The latter function could

explain the lag to wake from sleep. Those log files can be deleted if you are running low on space. But they could make it hard to troubleshoot issues that happened when they were last modified.

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System Cache files should not be deleted unless your system is backed up, as they could impact the ability of programs to launch.

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If you find you must access any of the Mac OS X only folders while in 9 or running an application in Classic, return to X, and quit Classic and repair permissions (links to Apple knowledgebase explaining how to repair permissions)


Note for Windows users: Mac OS X has two file locations that are nothing more than shortcuts. The translucent bar, known as the Dock, and the left Finder Window sidebar. That means do not assume when you drag to either location that a file is safely residing in some other folder, than the source folder you just dragged from. Unlike Windows, it is not! Also installer packages create virtual disks that dismount when you reboot. Those virtual disks contain folders that you sometimes have to drag to the hard drive Applications folder for them to be usable always. Otherwise you have to remount the image to get access to the application. Dragging the application from the image to the shortcut bar, or the Dock will NOT install it. Well packaged applications include their own installer proram to avoid this problem. If you drag to the Dock, expect it only to represent a shortcut to wherever you dragged it from. It is not safe deleting it from the source location if you want access to it again!