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Updated to El Capitan - No .config folder?

I recently "upgraded" my operating system to El Capitan in order to purchase/download a software that I need to run for work. While El Capitan has made my computer run slower and I'm getting the bouncing, spinning ball all the time 😟 , everything seems to be working ok. HOWEVER, after I downloaded the software that I need, when I go to save a file I get the error "Critical Error writing preferences: ini file is not writable..." I called the software company and they said the issue is that I don't have a .config folder? (How can that be...?) They said it's a hidden folder that I tried to find via finder and entering ~/.config and it said "no such folder exists." How can I locate the folder? How can I develop the folder? In order to change/save my preferences for this software, I apparently need the .config folder. So confused... 😕 Help!

MacBook Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11.3), 15-inch, Late 2008

Posted on Feb 2, 2016 7:37 AM

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3 replies

Feb 2, 2016 10:46 AM in response to catlady21401

If you do a find in Finder for ~/.config it won't show the file. That is the wrong way to find it. The .config file is hidden normally.


Try this:

1. Open Terminal

2. In the Terminal window, type in the command:

cd ~

3. Press enter. This was done just to ensure that Terminal was looking in the user directory.

4. Type in the command:

ls -al | grep config

5. Press enter. You should see something like this:


drwx------ 3 yourusername staff 102 Dec 22 2007 .config

drwxr-xr-x 19 yourusername staff 646 Dec 22 2007 .fontconfig

Feb 3, 2016 4:34 AM in response to catlady21401

The people writing that software appear to have limited knowledge of OS X. Good luck using their software.


As mentioned, .ini is for Windows, but it is just a text file and could be used. The point is they don't know how to do it correctly for OS X using a plist.

Also, the .config folder is not a default folder created by OS X. If they needed it (again it is not a normal location for application data files), they should have created it. Perhaps they provided some instructions for configuring the software.


You can create the directory yourself. Just copy and paste this command into a Terminal window:

mkdir ~/.config

Updated to El Capitan - No .config folder?

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