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Make User Library Visible in Mountain Lion

I would like to make my User Library folder permanently visible since it has much useful information that I consult. Many sources have recommended you insert chflags nohidden ~/Library/ into a Terminal window to make this change. I was able to do this successfull in Lion.


However, in Mountain Lion, Terminal responds with Permission Denied when I do this. Does anyone know what I need to do to make the command work?


Thanks.

iMac (27-inch Late 2009), OS X Mountain Lion

Posted on Aug 4, 2012 8:25 AM

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Posted on Aug 4, 2012 8:27 AM

put "sudo" in front of the command above

it will prompt you for admin password

22 replies

Aug 13, 2012 5:44 PM in response to ag2231

As markwmsn pointed out, this may be your case. If you are logged as root, then you are changing root's library flag and not your own. Unless root is the only user you are using on this Mac, I don't see a reason why you should log into the machine as root.


Would this work?


chflags nohidden /Users/username/Library/


where "username" would be the user you are trying to show the library for.


Otherwise, I'm out of ideas. :-(

Aug 13, 2012 5:58 PM in response to Jiri Krecek

Spoke too soon.

One more idea crept in


If/when you get the shell script working save it in Automator as an application and fire it as a Startup Item upon login. I just tested mine and it works flawlessly. Again, this will only work, if the shell scipt works in terminal.


I am logged in as a non-root user with admin privileges and pon running the script, library immediately appears or disappears, without prompting me for root password or using sudo.


If you are logged in as admin into OS X and the scipt still doesn't yield results, then I'm afraid something may be wrong with your OS X instance.

Apr 14, 2013 12:14 PM in response to DouglasRibeirao

One thing I had to do to get this to work was to create another administrator user and then go to the disc permissions and repair them there. It wasn't working for some reason from my admin I was logged into typing in my password. After doing that and logging back in and runing sudo chflags nohidden ~/Library and typing my password solved the problem and the library folder showed up.

Make User Library Visible in Mountain Lion

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