Mac Option Key tip #12: Open your Library folder

Updated August 29th, 2019.

(Twelfth in a series.)

Apple stores a lot of important stuff in your Library folder. Your mail messages, your preferences and settings, your keychains and passwords, and many, many other critical information is stored there. In some ways, your Library folder is the most important folder on your Mac– and you’ve probably never seen it. That’s the way Apple wants it; they don’t want you messing around with your Library folder, so they make it invisible. This keeps you from accidentally throwing your Library folder away, or accidentally putting things into it that don’t go there, or (worse) accidentally taking things out of it. But what if you have to get into your Library folder– maybe a preference is corrupt and you want to throw it away. Or maybe something goes wrong with your Keychain and you have to get into your Library folder to fix it. What do you do then?

You read two more paragraphs, that’s what you do then.

If you look at the Finder’s Go menu you see something like this:

Lots of interesting folders in that menu but none of them is “Library.” But, if you hold the Option key while clicking on the Go menu, you’ll see this, and you can select “Library” to pop the folder open

That’s all there is to it– just hold the Option key to gain the extra “Library” menu item. Of course, don’t change anything in your Library folder unless you know what you’re doing. There’s a reason Apple hides it from you.

And that’s 12– twelve articles about the fun you can have with your Mac’s Option key.

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Click here to see all of my blog posts involving the Option key. Save yourself time and effort with the tips in those posts! Copyright 2008-2024 Christian Boyce. All rights reserved.

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