Your Photos library holds all your photos, albums, slideshows, and print projects. If your library is large, and you want to free up storage space on your Mac, turn on iCloud Photo Library and use Optimize Mac Storage, or move your library to an external drive.

1. Access Library Folder Mac
2. Where Is The Library In Mac
3. Where Is The Library File Mac 10

Before you start, be sure to back up your library.

Mar 18, 2020 Your Photos library holds all your photos, albums, slideshows, and print projects. If your library is large, and you want to free up storage space on your Mac, turn on iCloud Photo Library and use Optimize Mac Storage, or move your library to an external drive. May 30, 2019  What is the Library folder on Mac? The Library folder In macOS is the system folder which keeps important support files, such as user account settings, preference files, containers, application scripts, caches, cookies, fonts and other service files. Jan 04, 2020  How to Move Your iTunes Library. You can move your iTunes library to a different folder, computer, or drive. Here's how to do it, even in macOS Catalina, which ditches iTunes for the Music app.

Prepare your drive

You can store your library on an external storage device, such as a USB or Thunderbolt drive formatted as APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled).¹ Find out how to check the format of your external storage device.

To prevent data loss, Apple doesn't recommend storing photo libraries on external storage devices like SD cards and USB flash drives, or drives that are shared on a network.

Move your Photos library to an external storage device

1. I backed up and deleted the photo library file in finder hoping to free some iCloud space. I created a new library and opened a fresh Photo app on my mac, however, on.
2. Her Photos Library file is 12.5GB, and she had just a few gigabytes left on the drive. While she was able to copy an older iPhoto Library to the other drive, the Finder kept hanging up during the.
3. Access Library Folder On Mac. The Library Folder on your Mac contains Preference Files, Caches, and Application Support Data. While regular Mac users may not find the need to access the Hidden Library Folder, advanced Mac users will at times come across the need to access files inside the Library Folder for troubleshooting and other purposes.
4. Near the bottom of the resulting View-Options palette is a setting called Show Library Folder. Enable this option. Your Library folder is immediately visible. Close the View-Options palette.

1. Quit Photos.
2. In the Finder, go to the external drive where you want to store your library.
3. In another Finder window, find your library. The default location is Users > [username] > Pictures, and it's named Photos Library.
4. Drag your library to its new location on the external drive. If you see an error, select your external drive's icon in the Finder, then choose File > Get Info. If the information under Sharing & Permissions isn't visible, click , then make sure the 'Ignore ownership on this volume' checkbox is selected. If it's not selected, click to unlock it, enter an administrator name and password, then select the checkbox.²
   
   
5. After the move is finished, double-click Photos Library in its new location to open it.
6. If you use iCloud Photo Library, designate this library as the System Photo Library.

Delete original library to save space

After you open your library from its new location and make sure that it works as expected, you can delete the library from its original location.

In a Finder window, go back to your Pictures folder (or whichever folder you copied your library from) and move Photos Library to the trash. Size of itunes library on mac. Then choose Finder > Empty Trash to delete the library and reclaim disk space.

Open another Photos library

If you have multiple libraries, here's how to open a different one:

1. Quit Photos.
2. Press and hold the Option key while you open Photos.
3. Select the library that you want to open, then click Choose Library.

Photos uses this library until you open a different one.

Learn more

If you have a permissions issue with your library, you might be able to resolve the issue by using the Photos library repair tool.

1. You can't move your library to a disk that's used for Time Machine backups.

2. If the volume isn't formatted APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled), or has been used for Time Machine backups but hasn't been erased, this checkbox will either not be present, or won't be selectable after unlocking. Erase and reformat the drive for this option to be available.

Your Mac has a secret. Thousands of them in fact, in the form of hidden files and folders lurking on its hard drive or SSD. Don’t worry, though. These files and folders are all supposed to be there. In fact, many of them are essential.

Many of these files are in your Mac’s main Library folder or in the ~/Library folder, which is in your User folder. Both these Library folders are hidden, but inside them are folders and files that hold things like preferences for apps.

In this article, we’ll tell you how you can view hidden files on your Mac and make your Library folder visible.

What are the hidden files on Mac?

The hidden files are a throwback to macOS’ Unix roots. In fact, the convention of naming them starting with a “.” comes from Unix. For that reason, you can’t use a “.” at the start of a regular file name, otherwise OS X will hide it.

The files themselves contain data like access rights and privileges for files and folders, application support files, and preferences.

Delete a keychain. In the Keychain Access app on your Mac, if keychains are hidden, choose View Show Keychains. Select a keychain in the Keychains list. Choose File Delete Keychain keychain name. Click Delete References. The quickest way to reset your keychain in Mac OS X 10.4 or later: Open Keychain Access, which is in the Utilities folder within the Applications folder. From the Keychain Access menu, choose Preferences. Click General, then click Reset My Default Keychain. Authenticate with your account login password. Quit Keychain Access. Restart your computer. The delete-keychain command-line option to security deletes the keychain file and removes it from the search list of keychains. To just delete the reference of the keychain from the search list use list-keychains -s, rewriting the list while removing the one you want to disappear. Start Keychain Access from the Applications Utilities folder. Go to the File menu Delete Keychain 'name-of-keychain' (usually this would be the 'login' keychain). Select the option to Delete References. Mac users can save passwords for various services and websites in the Mac Keychain. Sometimes when users change their Lehigh password they do not receive a prompt to enter the new one for a particular site or service. It may be necessary to manually remove a saved password so that you can trigger a new password prompt.

There are a number of reasons files and folders are hidden. Mostly, though, it’s because they contain data critical to the smooth running of your Mac and that you shouldn’t interfere with. In addition, there’s no real reason for most users to see or access them. Also, if they were all visible, your Mac would look horribly cluttered.

How to view hidden files on Mac

Before you make your Mac show hidden files, it’s important to remember they’ve been hidden for a reason. The data they contain could cause havoc if you delete or alter it and don’t know what you’re doing.

If your goal in viewing, for example ~/Library is so you can manually delete application support files for a program you’ve uninstalled, consider using a dedicated uninstaller like CleanMyMac X. That will make it easy to remove all the files associated with an application with one click. You can download CleanMyMac X for free here.

CleanMyMac X will also allow you to get rid of all the hidden files you no longer need. Many of these files are created and used then not needed anymore. They just sit there clogging up your hard drive. CleanMyMac X scans your Mac, identifies this system junk and allows you to quickly and easily get rid of it, potentially several gigabytes of disk space.

If you still want to view hidden files on your Mac, you need to go to the Finder and do the following:

1. Open a new Finder window and click on the name of your Mac under ‘Devices’ in the sidebar.
2. Click on Macintosh HD, or whatever you’ve called your startup drive if you’ve renamed it.
3. Press Command-Shift-. (period). You should now see lots of files and folders who’s name starts with “.” become visible.
4. To re-hide the files and folders, hold down Command-Shift-. again.

How to view your Mac’s ~/Library folder

There are a couple of methods for making your ~/Library folder visible. Here’s the simplest:

1. Click on the Finder in the Dock.
2. Open a new Finder window and navigate to your user folder (Tip: if it’s not in the sidebar, go to the Finder menu, choose Preferences, click Sidebar and check the box next to your Home folder)
3. Click on the Go menu.
4. Hold down the Option (Alt) key.
5. You should see that in the dropdown menu, Library appears below Home. Click on it.

Alternatively, do this to view your Library folder:

1. Click on the Finder in the Dock.
2. Click on the Go menu and choose Go to Folder.
3. In the window that opens, type “~/Library”

With both these methods, your Library folder will disappear again when you close the Finder window. It’s easy enough to run through the steps above again to make it visible again when you need to, but if you want it permanently accessible, there are a couple of ways to do it.

The quickest is to drag the Library folder to the Finder’s sidebar. That will create a shortcut to it that will persist. If you want to keep ~/Library visible but don’t want it clogging up the sidebar in Finder windows, do this:

1. Click on the Finder in the Dock.
2. Click on the View menu and choose Show View Options.
3. Check the box labelled Show Library Folder at the bottom of the window.

How to make macOS show hidden files using Terminal

If you’re feeling particularly adventurous, you can use the Terminal command line interface to view hidden files and folders. Here’s how to do it:

1. Open Terminal from the Utilities folder in Applications, or by searching for it using Spotlight. You can also use the Go menu in the Finder to go directly to the Utilities folder.
2. Type, or copy and paste, this command: defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles true
3. Press Return
4. Type: killall Finder

To hide the files again, repeat the above steps, but replace ‘true’ with ‘false’ at the end of step 2.

How to hide any file or folder using Terminal

Now that you know how to view hidden files and folders on your Mac, you may be wondering how you can hide other files or folders, to keep them away from prying eyes. There are a number of third-party applications and utilities that offer to do this for you, but you can do it yourself in Terminal, like this:

1. Launch Terminal.
2. Type: chflags hidden
3. Press the spacebar.
4. Drag the file or folder you want to hide from the Finder onto the Terminal window.
5. You’ll see the path to the file or folder displayed in Terminal after the command you typed.
6. Hit Return to execute the command.

Access Library Folder Mac

The file or folder you dragged onto the Terminal window will now be hidden. To see it again, use one of the methods described above to see hidden files.

To make the file visible permanently again, use the steps above, but in step 2 type: chflags nohidden

Where Is The Library In Mac

As you can see, viewing hidden files and folders on your Mac is very straightforward. There are a number of ways to do it, and you can make them visible temporarily or permanently.

However, just because you can view hidden files, doesn’t mean you should — the files are usually hidden because accidentally deleting them or altering them could cause chaos on your Mac. So, while it’s fine to have a peek, don’t do anything with the hidden files unless you know what you’re doing.

If you want to declutter your Mac or uninstall applications, use a dedicated application like CleanMyMac X. It will safely remove all useless files, add-ons, broken login items, caches, large and old files you didn't know about. Most likely, you won't even need to look for hidden files — CleanMyMac will do all the job for you.

We also showed that many of those files are stored in Library folders, including the one in your User folder, ~/Library. That folder is hidden by default, but you can view it or make it permanently visible using the techniques described above.

Where Is The Library File Mac 10

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