How To Unhide the Library Folder in Mac OS X Lion

Open Terminal (Applications > Utilities > Terminal) and enter the command

chflags nohidden ~/Library/

You can use

chflags hidden ~/Library

to hide it again.

You can also open it via holding down Option while opening the Go menu, then selecting Library.

Once it's open, you can drag the small icon of a folder in the header of the Library's window into the Favorites section of the Sidebar, where it will be conveniently accessible whenever you want.

Easiest thing in the world:

In the Finder hold the option (or alt) key and click on the Go Menu. Select Library. It'll bring you there.

If you need persistent access then simply add the Library to your sidebar in the Finder Window.

Regards

TD

How do you unhide in a Time Machine File?

Ken30 wrote:

How do you unhide in a Time Machine File?

What are you trying to do?

If in the Time Machine interface you wish to restore something in your Library, type cmd-shift-g, then type ~/Library into the path field and hit Go.

If you are browsing the Time Machine backup using the Finder, I hope you never wanted to use that backup again as you are more than likely going to corrupt it to the point of it not working any longer. If that is the case, you can do the same thing with the Go to Folder command above, just use the full path to where your backup is mounted. The easy way to find the path would be to open another Finder window and navigate to your home folder on the backup. Drag that home folder to an empty Go to Folder path field and it will fill in the full path, then add /Library on the end.

well all I wanted to do it restore my Safari bookmarks. Somewhere I lost or deleted some of my bookmarks. I thought an easy way would be to just import them back in from a time machine backup. so looking at a backup in finder is a bad idea?

Looking at a Time Machine backup in Finder is a bad idea. I don't think just looking will hurt it. See Pondini's FAQ for lots of information on TM: http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html

To restore, or just look around in Time Machine, you open Time Machine and browse it that way.

The Bookmarks.plist is in your user/Library/Safari folder.

To get there, you can either open a Finder window to that folder, then enter Time Machine.

Or, you can enter Time Machine in the Finder, and use the cmd-shift-g (Go to Folder) command to enter the path, "~/Library/Safari"

Find the Bookmarks.plist file and go back in time until you get to where you think it was still good. You can QuickLook the file, but it is in xml and may not be easy to figure out if the missing bookmarks are there.