Access Library Folder On Mac. The Library Folder on your Mac contains Preference Files, Caches, and Application Support Data. While regular Mac users may not find the need to access the Hidden Library Folder, advanced Mac users will at times come across the need to access files inside the Library Folder for troubleshooting and other purposes. Photo library. Ever since Lion (OS X 10.7), Apple has hidden your personal Library folder (/Library) by default. In Lion and Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8), you could make the folder visible, but it required some work.
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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.
How find a Mac's hidden files and Library folder. A quick and easy way to find secret files within a. If you wanted to access the Library folder you could just open your Home folder and view. Childhood is surreal. Why shouldn't children's books be? In this whimsical talk, award-winning author Mac Barnett speaks about writing that escapes the page, art as a doorway to wonder - and what real kids say to a fictional whale.
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 delete mac photo library. Deleting pictures from Photos only remove the pictures in the Masters folder of Photos Library. There are more pictures in the disk drive that are not imported into Photos. To delete photos from Mac, you can go through all the folders that have images and videos and delete. Mar 18, 2020 Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac Prepare your drive. You can store your library on an external storage device. Move your Photos library to an external storage device. Delete original library to save space. After you open your library from its new location. Here are two strategies that work in Photos in macOS all the way through Catalina that can help you assemble a list of images to delete from your library while maintaining more control. Dec 27, 2015 then move the Photos Library.photoslibrary to the Trash and empty the Trash. By default your Photos Library.photoslibrary will be in your Pictures folder. If you are using iCloud Photo Library, you should wait for the upload of your photos to iClod to finish, before you delete the Photos Library. How to delete iPhoto library on your Mac. Click on the iPhoto Library listing, and without letting go of your mouse or trackpad button, drag it until it’s over top the Trash icon on your. You can select (click on) the iPhoto Library, then right-click on your mouse.
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:
- Open a new Finder window and click on the name of your Mac under ‘Devices’ in the sidebar.
- Click on Macintosh HD, or whatever you’ve called your startup drive if you’ve renamed it.
- Press Command-Shift-. (period). You should now see lots of files and folders who’s name starts with “.” become visible.
- 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:
How To Open Secret Library On Mac Free
- Click on the Finder in the Dock.
- 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)
- Click on the Go menu.
- Hold down the Option (Alt) key.
- You should see that in the dropdown menu, Library appears below Home. Click on it.
Alternatively, do this to view your Library folder:
- Click on the Finder in the Dock.
- Click on the Go menu and choose Go to Folder.
- In the window that opens, type “~/Library”
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:
- Click on the Finder in the Dock.
- Click on the View menu and choose Show View Options.
- 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:
- 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.
- Type, or copy and paste, this command: defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles true
- Press Return
- 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:
- Launch Terminal.
- Type: chflags hidden
- Press the spacebar.
- Drag the file or folder you want to hide from the Finder onto the Terminal window.
- You’ll see the path to the file or folder displayed in Terminal after the command you typed.
- 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.
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.
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.
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Privacy is something we often take for granted until it is gone. Ask yourself this – do you have photos that you would not want to be viewed by someone else? Most people would answer yes, which makes it all the more surprising that more of us don’t take the necessary measures to ensure that our private pictures are secure.
Keep your personal photos private on macOS
Today we’re going to show you how easy it is to hide pictures on a Mac by looking at some of the most popular and useful tips for keeping your pictures locked away.
We begin with hands-on tips and build up to the photo hiding app, Hider 2.
We begin with hands-on tips and build up to the photo hiding app, Hider 2.
How To Open Mac Files
How to hide picture folders manually
There are a few manual ways to keep your private photos away from someone who has access to your Mac. These methods may not provide the full privacy solution but combined, may give you enough security to feel comfortable.
We’re going to skip obvious and time-consuming options like renaming and moving folders so that they don’t sound like they contain anything “interesting”.
Instead, let’s begin with the macOS Photos app, which has the functionality to “hide” photos, although it has a very different idea of what “hidden” truly means. When you select photos, simply right click and choose to hide them. Now they will not appear in your photo stream.
While this may be sufficient if you’re showing someone your photo collection, it is not going to stop someone who has access to your Mac. To view these items and unhide them, all you have to do is go to View > Show Hidden Photo Album.
Very convenient for you. But unfortunately also very convenient for someone else using your system.
A hidden feature to hide pictures
Open Hidden Library In Mac
A lot of people don’t know that it is possible to create multiple photo libraries on one system. Simply hold the Option key (alt) when launching the Photos app. This will launch a dialog asking you to select from a list of photo libraries or create a new library. This new secret library can even be set up on an external drive.
To choose this library all you have to do is hold the Option key when launching the app and select it from the list. It won’t stop a dedicated hacker but it will prevent kids and co-workers from stumbling across photos they shouldn’t see.
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Or lock photos by encrypting everything!
Another option is the macOS app, FileVault 2. The solution offered by this app is very limited but may be enough considering your personal photo privacy needs.
FileVault 2 will encrypt your entire system drive, including photos, but this will only safeguard your system when your Mac is turned off. As soon as it turns on and you enter your password, your drive is unencrypted.
What this means is that co-workers and hackers could still access your private photos after you’ve logged in, so it’s mainly a security feature to prevent someone who has stolen your Macbook from getting at your data.
Another restriction is that you can only encrypt your system drive, so if you have photos on another internal or external drive, FileVault isn’t going to be of much help.
Here’s how to turn FileVault on:
- Log in to macOS with an account that has admin privileges
- Navigate to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > FileVault
- Click the padlock in the lower left corner and enter your admin password
- Turn on FileVault
- Copy the recovery key and put it somewhere safe
- Your system will now reboot, and once you have signed in, your drive will encrypt for the first time
Note – The first encryption could take hours. You can use your Mac during the process.
Library On Mac
Better yet, get specialized hide photo help
FileVault will encrypt your entire disk but what if you just want to hide a few specific pictures or hide a single gallery? macOS may have some useful tools to help lock away your private pictures, but they can't compare to an app developed specifically for this purpose. Hider 2 is an actual photo hider app, and it ticks all the boxes - ease of use, functionality, integration, and powerful security.
Once installed, Hider 2 integrates with macOS to such a degree that it feels like it was always a part of your system. Now, hiding photos, hiding galleries, even hiding other types of files, becomes as easy as dragging whatever you want to hide to the Hider 2 app icon, or right-clicking on files to add them that way. Compared to the effort needed for the manual methods, this is simply the quickest way to hide photos.
It’s not just about ease of use as the app offers a high level of security thanks to AES - 256 encryption, which ensures that not only are your photos hidden from prying eyes, they also are safe and secure from dedicated hackers.
What does it take to keep your images safe?
Once you hide pictures, photo galleries and anything else you want to secure, you can group and organize your files in the app to make finding what you need as easy as can be. Hider 2 is even integrated with Finder so that tag searches on your photos will also work.
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Hider 2 essentially operates like a secret, secure room. When you’re in the room you can work as easily as you would with photos and files that aren’t hidden, and when you’re done, you simply close the door by toggling the app off. At that point everything inside that room disappears until you enter the app with your password again.
How To Open Secret Library On Mac Free
Open library for other user mac password. Having private pictures is natural, so the solution for hiding them should be just as natural. While macOS provides a smattering of picture hiding and encrypting options, they just can’t compare to a dedicated photo hide app like Hider 2.
Try it today to take control of your private life before someone else does.