Mar 12, 2015  iDownloadBlog (iDB) was founded in May 2008 as a weblog focused on delivering Apple news, reviews, editorials as well as guides and tutorials about the iPhone, iPad, everything iOS, and Mac. Jan 12, 2020  Apple hides the Library folder by setting a file system flag associated with the folder. You can toggle the visibility flag for any folder on your Mac; Apple just chose to set the Library folder's visibility flag to the off state by default. Here's how to change it.

• Unhide Library Macos
• Library Unhide Machine
• Unhide Library Mac
• Unhide Library Folder Mac Mojave
• Unhide User Library Mac
• Unhide Library Files Mac
• Library Unhide Mac Library

What happens when you hide an item?

When you hide an item, it won't appear in your library on any devices that you use with your Apple ID, unless you already downloaded the item onto those devices.

You can permanently unhide the Library Menu Option in the top-menu bar on your Mac by using the Terminal Command. The process is reversible and you can easily go back to the default hidden Library Menu Setting by using the Terminal command once again.

If you use Family Sharing, family members won't see items that you hide, unless they downloaded the item before you hid it.

If you or a family member downloaded the item onto another device before you hid it, you can delete the item from that device. Learn how to delete music, movies, and TV shows or delete books.

Hiding an item doesn't hide the record of purchase. You can still see the item in your purchase history.

How to hide music, movies, and TV shows

1. On your computer, open the Apple Music app, Apple TV app, or iTunes.
2. In the menu bar at the top of your computer screen or at the top of the iTunes window, click Account, then click Purchased. (If you use Family Sharing, you might see Family Purchases instead of Purchased.)
3. Depending on what you want to hide, click Music, Movies, or TV Shows at the top of the window, then click All. All of your purchased items appear.
   
4. Find the item that you want to hide. Hold your pointer over the item until the hide purchase button appears. Click the hide purchase button .
   

How to unhide music, movies, and TV shows

To open the Apple Music app and sign in to your Account Information page, click this link: View My Account. Or follow these steps:

1. On your computer, open the Apple Music app, Apple TV app, or iTunes.
2. In the menu bar at the top of your computer screen or at the top of the iTunes window, click Account, then click View My Account.
3. On the page that appears, scroll to the iTunes in the Cloud section. Next to Hidden Purchases, click Manage.
   
4. Depending on what you want to unhide, click Music, Movies, or TV Shows at the top of the window.
5. Find the item that you want to unhide, then click Unhide under it.
   

How to hide books and audiobooks

1. Open the Books app on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.
2. Tap Library.
3. Tap the More icon below the book or audiobook that you want to hide. If the item is part of a series, tap the series, choose an individual book, then tap More .
   
4. Tap Remove.
   
5. Tap Hide Book or Hide Audiobook.
   If you don't see Hide Book or Hide Audiobook, look for Remove Download, which removes the book from your device, or Delete Everywhere, which removes the book from iCloud and all your devices.

You can also hide books in the Books app on a Mac. Click Book Store, click Featured, click Purchased in the Quick Links on the right, then click All. Hover your pointer over a book and click the Hide purchase button that appears.

How to unhide books and audiobooks

1. Open the Books app.
2. Tap Reading Now.
3. Tap the sign-in button or your photo at the top of the screen, then tap Manage Hidden Purchases.
   
4. Find the item that you want to unhide, then tap Unhide next to the item.

To unhide books in the Books app on Mac, click Store > View My Apple ID, scroll to Hidden Purchases, then click Manage.

Learn more

• You can also hide and unhide apps.
• Or you can delete apps from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.
• Hiding an app doesn't cancel a subscription. Learn how to view, change, or cancel your subscriptions.

I am getting 'permission denied'. I am the administrator so I don't understand why I am getting this.

You might have to sudo. On my Snow Leopard, I see that the directory is root:admin, so you shouldn't need to sudo, but you might as well try it anyway.

Unhide Library Macos

sudo did the trick. Thanks.

Library Unhide Machine

Alternatively, after opening the library folder, using the Go menu, you can drag the folder's icon in the title bar to the Dock, Tool Bar, and/or the Side Bar.

Let me rephrase for clarity:
After opening '~/Library' using the 'Go..' menu, you can drag the proxy icon (the icon in the titlebar) to the sidebar, etc.

Freeware for that - allows you to temporarily (or permanently) hide / unhide files and folders. Basically, a GUI for those who don't want to mess with terminal.
http://gotoes.org/sales/ShowHiddenFilesMacOSX/

Change iphoto library. You can use iCloud Photos, Shared Albums, and My Photo Stream only with the System Photo Library. If you choose a different library in Photos without designating it as the System Photo Library, the iCloud tab in Photos preferences is disabled:If you designate a new library as the System Photo Library and then turn on iCloud Photos, the photos and videos in the new library will merge with those already in your iCloud Photos. Photos in your System Photo Library are available in apps like iMovie, Pages, and Keynote. You can also sync them to iOS devices and view them on Apple TV. And if you want to use your own images as your desktop picture or screen saver, the images need to be in your System Photo Library before you can select them in System Preferences.If you have only one photo library, then it's the System Photo Library.

That utility is for globally turning off and on the behaviour of hiding files. I don't have Lion yet, but I imagine by showing hidden files globally that way, you'd be able to Get Info on a file and turn off its individual visibility.

All you need to do, on a per use basis, is hold down the OPTION key while selecting GO from the FILE MENU; Library automagically appears in the list.

To save Snow Leopard users time: this doesn't work in Snow Leopard.

I tried it and got this result: dyld: shared cached file was build against a different libSystem.dylib, ignoring cache

Unhide Library Mac

This is a simple but important hint. Thank you.

What would be a good way to check visibility of a folder, so visibility can be toggled?

Unhide Library Folder Mac Mojave

Unhide User Library Mac

Itunes for mac doesn't see songs in library hours. how do i install Quartz Composer? i can't find it in installer.

Unhide Library Files Mac

Works great, thanks for the hint. I did run into one hiccup though. I think this was just a random isolated instance but just in case anyone else gets weird behavior, repair your permissions. I changed the permissions of my Library folder and my downloads folder would appear empty (it wasn't empty before) and random files ranging from resource folders to language files and pretty much anything else you can think of was constantly appearing and disappearing.
I performed this hint on a fresh install of lion and it worked perfectly.
End result: Hint works as described, if you run into weird behavior just repair your permissions and try again.

Thanks! I've been looking for this folder for weeks.

It's worth mentioning that installing the system update from 10.7.2 to 10.7.3 resets the user Library to be hidden again, so you'll need to run this command after any system update.

Library Unhide Mac Library

When you launch Terminal, you're in your user home folder anyway, so you only need to type
chflags nohidden Library
The tilde and slash are superfluous.