User Library Folder SubFolders Explained

The main dock on Mac has nearly 60 apps. I have Dock-It installed with additional docks at the top, right, and left of one screen with 50+ additional frequently used apps.

I'm 99.9999 percent certain it's one of your apps causing the corruption. I'd first look at any app you need to specify your admin password to install. I suspect you have a lot of old apps. These app have not keep up with the times. It's water over the ****, but you should have a production system and and a test system. At least have a production drive. When you want to upgrade, use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone you production to a new drive/partition. Update it. Run apps to see if they still work. Once satisfied, move to the new drive.

I have to recommend the Windows favorite solution: nuck your drive. You should get three drives. Production α, backup β, and backup γ. Install macOS in α. Use CCC to copy α to β. Use divide and concur to find out the problem software. Install half of the software on your production system. Does α work fine? Good, CCC β to γ. CCC α to β. Install half of remaining software on α. Proceed accordingly. Does α fail. Bad, CCC βto α. Install half of the "bad" package of software onto α. Does it work or not. Proceed down good or bad path.

This will be painful, but you have painted yourself into a corner by doing work-a-rounds to get out of problems without finding the root cause.

R

Perhaps someone can spot the issue.

1) Try a safe boot.

Shutdown your machine. Hold down the shift key. Poweron. The boot up will take longer than normal because the filesystem on the startup drive is being checked and repaired as needed. All about safe mode including what features and apps safe boot leaves out.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1455

2)

Download etrecheck. Click on the download link at the bottom of the screen. http://etrecheck.com/

Run etrecheck. The first five runs are free.

How to post etrecheck findings:

a) click on "Share report"

b) click on "Copy report"

c) Paste the information into an ASC forum reply.

Using EtreCheck by etresoft, the author https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-11591

Stamp of approval https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-8181

3) list what software you use. Perhaps someone can spot the "bad" boy.

R

Why hasn't Apple created a migration assistant to transfer information from one user account to another user account on the same Mac, but without copying any system information or Apple applications so as to corrupt the new user account?

I imagine it is not a commonly needed function. Did you disable the option to migrate applications?

Some applications like…

Are they storing the information in the Application bundle, or in the user Library? If in the Library, it should be in its own folder either in Application Support or straight in the Library folder. Just copy that from one user to the other. It would be best to copy it into the /Users/Shared folder, then log into new account and copy from Shared to the new account Library.

I doubt that there is one. Apple doesn't document much about the OS; pretty much the minimal amount of information to get you working.

Do your standard accounts become corrupted? If not, you'd be better served by operating from a standard account until you figure out what is causing the corruption. Just log into the Admin account on the rare occasions it is necessary.

Do user accounts become corrupted?

Yes!

How are they becoming corrupted? Knowing that might help solve the problem.

I've never had a corrupted user account, ever. Of the six Macs I have currently running, none have ever had a corrupted user account.

I have seen requests for that feature ever since multiple user accounts were offered.

There have been requests for thousands of features. That doesn't mean there is time and resources to implement them. Nor does it mean that they are important or necessary. It might be nice to have, but it is hardly necessary to ever do this.

Your Mac(s) have issues that you need to resolve. Maybe it is third-party software, maybe something else.

Until you figure out what causes the corruption, you'll just be stuck doing this over and over. If that's the route you want to go, create a new user, open that Library Folder and document all of the folders. Once you start opening applications, the ones added to the Library are the ones created by those apps.

That's unfortunate. I'd like to review the etrecheck report myself.

How to post etrecheck findings:

1) click on "Share report"

2) click on "Copy report"

3) Paste the information into an ASC forum reply.

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7. I looked in the DiagnosticReports and saw reports for Finder & Dock but Apple's forum will not let me paste them here. It keeps saying post contain illegal characters.

That's unfortunate. The latest version of etrecheck attempts to work around this issue. It could be that etrecheck only clean up the report when you do the copy the etrecheck way. [ I don't know if this feature has made it out of beta yet anyway. ] Apple knows all about it. It's an anti-spam feature that Apple not likely to change any time soon.

R

You need to paste the results on some other site on the web. I use pastebin.com

R

I've used the Unix ln command to facilitate folders being on external drives. not wanting to mess with the terminal, install SymbolicLinker. SymbolicLinker is a tiny contextual menu plugin that, once installed, allows any user to create symbolic links to files inside the Finder.</p>

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/10433/

R

Hello eyepieced,

Can you back up and explain the external hard drive problem in more detail? Perhaps in a new thread?

The Library folder should be considered entirely off-limits to the end user. This folder is reserved for apps to use. The only thing an end-user can do in this folder is corrupt the contents. It is not documented in any way. Apple apps and third party apps are free to install software and files in any locations, at any time, and for any reason. What you are attempting is simply impossible.

I imagine it is not a commonly needed function. Did you disable the option to migrate applications?

A Google search and this own forum says otherwise.

How many did you find? How does that number's magnitude compare to the millions of macOS users?

I have no reason to alter the migration settings since its I of no use.

You asked about Migration; I assume, now, that you did not mean actually using the Migration Assistant. There's not really any "altering" of anything. It asks what you want to Migrate. You choose the user and deselect Applications.

How is it that you are managing to corrupt the user account?

If you are direct copying from one user's Library to another's, that won't work well at all. You might recover from that by using this:

Resolve issues caused by changing the permissions of items in your home folder - Apple Support

You might also try making a backup, deleting your old user, and use Migration assistant to migrate the backup to your Mac.

How to move your content to a new Mac - Apple Support

That means I can't use some Classic only scanners which despite being old have a better depth of field that the junk on the market these days.

Have you looked at VueScan for those scanners. It has a long list of supported devices.

From the website:

VueScan is compatible with 5718 scanners from 42 manufacturers on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux