Put it in the Dock Once you’ve opened the ~/Library folder in the Finder, drag its icon from the Finder window’s title bar into the Dock. Choose it from here to open it in the Finder. Use the Recent Folders menu If you’ve accessed your Library folder recently, it will appear in the Recent Folders submenu in the Finder’s Go menu. In order to use one of these options, though, you must first access the ~/Library folder using one of the procedures in the previous section-you can’t keep the folder accessible until you’ve accessed it at least once. These procedures are for the people who access ~/Library often enough that they want quick access, but they still want to keep the folder invisible. Ways to view it frequently but keep it invisible For example, Launcher will let you assign a keyboard shortcut to ~/Library press that shortcut at any time to open the folder. Launcher, let you quickly open folders in the Finder. Use a launcher utility Most launcher utilities, such as Some third-party launcher utilities (see the next item) will even let you run scripts using the keyboard or keyboard shortcuts. If you make the Scripts menu visible, as explained in the previous item, you can choose this script at any time to open your Library folder. Save the script in Script file format in your Scripts folder ( ~/Library/Scripts-alas, in the Save dialog, you’ll need to use the Go To Folder shortcut-Shift+Command+G-just to get to the Scripts folder). Launch AppleScript Editor, create a new script document, and enter the command do shell script "open ~/Library". Use an AppleScript Speaking of AppleScript, you can create a simple script that opens your Library folder. Perhaps the easiest option here is to activate Apple’s Scripts menu (via the preferences window for AppleScript Editor, which is in /Applications/Utilities) this systemwide menu includes an Open User Scripts Folder command. Do so, and then navigate up the folder hierarchy (by right-clicking the Finder-window’s title-bar icon, by pressing Command+Up, or, in column view, by scrolling to the left) to view the contents of your Library folder. Use an application that provides access Some applications that store files in ~/Library (usually in ~/Library/Application Support) include a button or menu command for opening that program’s support folder. Use the open command in Terminal Launch Terminal (in /Applications/Utilities) from within your own account, type open ~/Library, and press Return to open the folder in the Finder. If you’re the kind of user who rarely visits ~/Library, but you’d like to be able to open it if the need arises, these methods are for you. I’ve come up with 18 ways to do so which one(s) you choose will depend on how frequently you’ll need to access the folder and which method better fits your workflow. You just need to know how to access the folder or, if you prefer, unhide it. Luckily, as I mentioned, the folder is just hidden, using a special file attribute called the hidden flag. While I understand Apple’s motives here-I’ve had to troubleshoot more than a few Macs on which an inexperienced user had munged the contents of ~/Library-there are plenty of valid reasons a user might need to access their personal Library folder. But that’s fodder for a different article.) Yes, I realize that’s a questionable assumption, given that the first user account on a Mac is always set up as an admin account. (Why hide ~/Library but not /Library, the similar folder located at the root level of your drive, which holds systemwide support files? Most likely because only admin users can modify /Library, and Apple assumes that a user with admin-level privileges will know what he or she is doing. This is the same reason Apple has always hidden the folders containing OS X’s Unix underpinnings: /bin, /sbin, /usr, and the like. The reason for this move is presumably that people unfamiliar with the inner workings of Mac OS X often open ~/Library and start rooting around, moving and deleting files, only to find later that programs don’t work right, application settings are gone, or-worse-data is missing. But in Lion, Apple has made the folder invisible. What’s that? It’s gone? It seems so, doesn’t it? But rest assured, your personal Library folder is right where it’s always been, at the root level of your Home folder.
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