[Macworld]

Post your comments for 18 ways to view the ~/Library folder in Lion here

[jowie]

I'm running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 here, and the user Library folder is not available from the Finder Go menu, even when I hold down alt...

[bastion]

jowie, on 25 July 2011 - 06:55 AM, said:

I'm running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 here, and the user Library folder is not available from the Finder Go menu, even when I hold down alt...

It doesn't need to be. Prior to Lion it's just sitting there in your home directory waiting to be double-clicked, or opened by almost any of the other means described for Lion in this article.

[bastion]

Macworld, on 25 July 2011 - 06:31 AM, said:

(Why hide ~/Library but not /Library, the similar folder located at the root level of your drive, which holds systemwide support files? Most likely because only admin users can modify /Library, and Apple assumes that a user with admin-level privileges will know what he or she is doing. Yes, I realize that’s a questionable assumption, given that the first user account on a Mac is always set up as an admin account. But that's fodder for a different article.)

There's another potential rationale, and that's the confusion and resulting support costs when novice users add something or make some other legit change to their personal Library and then wonder why it's not available to another account. One easily-accessible Library folder both reduces the number of those calls and simplifies those that still happen.

This post has been edited by bastion: 25 July 2011 - 07:11 AM

[talmy]

19th way: In Keyboard Preferences, add a shortcut for the Finder Application, menu item "Library", with your preferred keystroke. I use Command-Option-L. This matches nicely with the existing Finder menu item, which doesn't have a keyboard shortcut by default.

[mrgrumpy]

So far I've yet to see one good reason to upgrade to Lion. It sounds like a giant pain without much gain. Is there some good reason?

[zarmanto]

That's one crazy-long-list of access methods, Dan! Even though I haven't gone to Lion quite yet, I learned a thing or two from that list that I can already see coming in handy in other ways.

[zarmanto]

mrgrumpy, on 25 July 2011 - 07:17 AM, said:

So far I've yet to see one good reason to upgrade to Lion. It sounds like a giant pain without much gain. Is there some good reason?

There is rarely a single overriding "good" reason to migrate to something new and unproven. It's typically all of the little things that add up to an upgrade rationale; several of those little things will come in the form of "features" which anyone can readily look up and read about on Apple's website. Other little things will be various undocumented bug fixes, which you may learn about from reading here on Macworld, or elsewhere. And of course, the little things which end-users seldom understand are the underlying API improvements... those are the little things that prompt other developers to release programs which require the update in order to function. (Obviously, the API updates tend to take a little longer to impact actual upgrade decisions.)

So I would argue that if you're looking for one good reason to upgrade... you're probably not going to find it. As such... just stay with what you've got, for now; it's not like it's hurting you (or anyone else) for you to be a generation behind for awhile. When you've learned about enough of those little things to make Lion seem worth your thirty bucks, then upgrade. In the meantime, just keep reading up on both the positive and negative issues with Lion, as I'm sure the knowledge garnered will come in handy when the time comes.

[restiffbard]

mrgrumpy, on 25 July 2011 - 07:17 AM, said:

So far I've yet to see one good reason to upgrade to Lion. It sounds like a giant pain without much gain. Is there some good reason?

Save, Versions, Resume. 'Nuff said.

[mretondo]

Thanks Dan, those are all great suggestions. Now if I could only find a way for Spotlight to always search the System folder.

[JThree]

Is there a way to make it permanently available in the Go Menu without having to hold down the option key?

[Dan Frakes]

zarmanto, on 25 July 2011 - 07:19 AM, said:

That's one crazy-long-list of access methods, Dan! Even though I haven't gone to Lion quite yet, I learned a thing or two from that list that I can already see coming in handy in other ways.

To be honest, that's one of the reasons to do an article like this—in addition to serving a practical purpose, it gives readers a taste of the many ways you can do things.

[lwrandall]

An easy way is to use the system utility Onyx. They just posted a Lion compatible beta version. Once you are in Onyx go to Finder options menu and check Show Hidden Files. Thats it you're done.

[Dan Frakes]

JThree, on 25 July 2011 - 08:46 AM, said:

Is there a way to make it permanently available in the Go Menu without having to hold down the option key?

Unfortunately, not without hacking into system files—at least not that I've discovered.