How To Get To Your Library Folder On a Mac

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Here are different ways to access the Library Folder on the Mac.

Now a common question that Mac users have is how to access their Library Folder. First consider there are at least two Library Folders. In the Finder if you go to the top level of your Mac, the computer level, and then you go down to your main internal hard drive you'll notice you've got Applications, System, Users Folder, and the Library Folder. This is your Systemwide Library Folder and usually not the one people want to get to when they want to get into their Library Folder. What they really want is in their Users Folder in their Home Folder. You can have multiple user accounts and each one will have its own Home Folder with its own Library Folder. Those Mac users will just have one Home Folder and in that will be their Library Folder. 

But notice here there isn't one. There's no Library Folder shown here inside my Home Folder. That's because it is hidden that makes it a lot harder to get into but there are several different methods. If you look online you may come across all these different methods as THE method to get into the Library Folder but each one works just as well. Let's start with one that just uses the GO menu here as long as you're in the Finder and then go to Folder. Sometimes the instructions will just say use Shift Command G which gets you to the same place. It brings up this special window here that allows you to type a path and the Finder will go to that. It doesn't matter if that path is hidden. It will still go to it. So it works to get to the Library Folder. A shortcut to get to your Home Folder is to user the tilde character, which on US keyboards is the backtick key just above the Tab Key and below Escape. You need to shift to type tilde and then slash and then type Library. Then you can just press Return and it will go there. You could also just type slash and then Users and then your User Folder name and then Library. It will get you to the same place. Now it takes you down into the Library folder. Sure enough if you Command click here you can see you are in your Home Folder in Library.  But if you go back up here you'll see that the Library folder is once again hidden from you.

Another way to get here is when you're viewing the Home Folder, and you must be viewing the Home Folder so you see it up here with the little Home icon and the name of your Home Folder, you can go to View and then Show View Options or Command J. Then one of the options listed here will be Show Library Folder. If you don't see this means you are not in your Home Folder. You are in another location. The checkbox only appears if you are in your Home Folder. So if you check that and the Library Folder isn't visible along with the other folders, and will remain so every time you come back to the Home Folder. 

But my favorite way to access the Home Folder works wherever you are. So you can be, say, in your Documents Folder or somewhere else. Use the GO menu. You have all of these locations, like Documents, Desktop, Download, Home, and so on. It would great if the Library folder would be here. It is here! It can be revealed just by holding down the Option Key. Notice how it appears there now. If you now select it you go to your Library Folder. You don't have to be in your Home Folder to start with and it is much easier than typing out the path. There are some other way to get there. Like some people may even tell you to use the Terminal with the Open Command. But I think going with the Option Key held down is the quickest way.

If you find these videos valuable consider joining the more than 2000 others that support MacMost at Patreon. You get exclusive content, course discounts, and more. You can read about it at macmost.com/patreon. 

So now that you're here in your Library Folder why would you want to be here? For most Mac users you never need to go to the Library Folder at all. It is fairly typical to use your Mac for years and years and never need to go here. But some people like to go in here to remove files they no longer need. For instance, there's a folder here called Application Support. If you open that up and look inside it you're going to see the names of apps you have installed or maybe previously have installed but no longer use. Sometimes it will just be the app name. Sometimes it will be a company name. Sometimes they use the format com.company name dot app name or some abbreviation thereof. If you scroll down you can see all these different apps. Now not all apps put things in the Application Support Folder. Some that do only use a tiny bit of space. But others use a lot of space. I'm in List View here which you can get to easily by choosing View As List. That allows me to Sort By Size. Sorting by size and looking under Application Support I can see which folders take up the most space. If I look at the name of the folder I hopefully can identify the app that that folder is supporting. So these first two are apps I have installed. I can see they are using a lot of space and based on what the app does I kind of know why. So fine.  But then if I go further down the list I may see an app that I have uninstalled previously Like this one. It left behind a fairly large amount of data here in the Library Folder. I feel very confident that I have uninstalled this app and that the files in here are not being used by any other app. I can simply drag this to the trash to get rid of that folder. 

But it is not always clear cut. Sometimes you may not recognize the name because it is a company name or maybe an older name of the app or maybe it is a name that signifies that the files in here are shared by several different related apps. For instance music producers and graphic artists may commonly have folders filled with things that support different apps and the name might not be readily recognizable. In that case you want to be very careful deleting something here to make an app that you are using inoperable and require you to reinstall it again. 

There are other folders as well that may have similar things from other apps. For instance I have apps sorted by size here and I can see my Caches folder is the largest and that is fairly typical. Having files stored in your Caches speeds up the operation of those apps. If I open this up, for instance, I can see a large cache used by my screen recording software which makes sense. I can see some other apps, ever browsers, that have large amount of data in them. So generally you don't want to delete caches unless you know that you don't have the app anymore, you won't be needing this cache, or perhaps  support from that app has told you that deleting that cache will help with some problem. 

Containers is another place that you can look for the names of apps and see how large the container is. Whichever folder you're looking in you do want to pay attention to the size here and keep in mind once you get below a certain size it is probably not worth your time and effort to figure out what is going on. For instance, these are fairly big folders. But as soon as I get down to these here, these are very small folders and trying to figure out what that folder is for and should you get rid of it, really doesn't have that great of a return. As a matter of fact if you scroll down here you're going to find very tiny little folders just saving little bits of preferences. Even if you uninstalled the app the idea is if you reinstall it later it remembers things either about your User Account or your preferences or settings inside that app. But certainly it is not worth your time trying to figure out what this is just to save 160K or certainly not worth your time trying to figure out what this is to save 21 bytes. 

As a general rule you shouldn't delete anything in the Library Folder unless you really know what it is and deleting it will be okay. Otherwise look on the website for that app or contact support for that app to ask about that folder. If you're not sure what that app is you can always just use the name of that folder there and do a search online to see if maybe others are talking about it or the search instantly reminds you of which app that name applies to. But don't just go through the Library Folder and delete stuff. That's a surefire way to break apps that you need to use or maybe even cause problems with your entire Mac system. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.