Preference files from various applications and OS settings get stashed away in the Preferences folder (logical) which in turn resides in the Library folder (yeah whatever) of each user’s folder.
For years on end, since the heydays of Cheetah (MacOS 10.1) I would fix misbehaving applications by going in there and nuking the preference files, relaunching the app in question, and opening the app’s settings and reconfiguring them to my liking as need be.
At some (more recent than MacOS 10.6.8, but before 10.10.x apparently), Apple in their infinitely paternlistic wisdom decided users should not be able to see their own fucking Library folder.
I was trying to tech support my lower eastside gf’s Mac. Safari would not respond to attempted changes to preferences; it was opening to Apple’s own site and new tabs and windows would show these “tiles” that she found confusing and unfamiliar. Wanted it to open to gmail. I change the Prefs. Quit Safari. Reopen Safari. Freaking Apple site. New Window: freaking tiles again.
Can’t get to Preferences.
Authorize the root user. switch user. Oops, the remote access program disconnected me. (I was doing this from a different location via remote control) (OK not smart). Couldn’t reconnect. Had to walk her through clicks and keystrokes, blind, to get back to her environment.
In person today: log in as root, go to her ~/Library/Preferences, find all the Safari this, nuke. Log in as her. Change prefs. Done.
For what it’s worth, as of 10.9, ~/Library can be turned (in)visible by a checkbox in the View Options (⌘J) of your home folder in the Finder. I still feel your pain, though.
To answer the implied question of the OP: because there’s nothing in that folder that a normal user would ever intentionally want to access or modify, and there’s umpteen gazillion ways to get to it if you’re not a normal user.
Very few people are ever going to need to delete a preference file manually (or for that matter know to do it even when they do have to). I’ve been (ab)using Macs for more than three decades now, and I’ve had to manually delete a preference file maybe three times. And there are lots of folks who like to “clean up” stuff they don’t think they need, especially if its large and taking up space. Deleting, renaming, or “cleaning up” ~/Library can be catastrophic – you can render a system unbootable from the Finder alone by messing with things like kext files in there.
So on both Mac and Windows, the “system” directories are hidden from users by default. If it bugs you, make a shell script with “open ~/Library” in it, and put it in the finder sidebar. One click and you’ve got a Finder window open.
Unfortunately, OS makers these days seem to have no concept of a specific class of user. Specifically, users who know what they are doing. Increasingly, they don’t give any users adequate controls even for very common situations, and often no real way to correct bad behavior. The nasty tendency to hide very important customization options and controls does not help.
This thread has already listed four different ways of getting you to what you want (none of which require root access, by the way), which indicates that the OS makers ARE giving options for users who know what they are doing to get access to what they need.
I remember the MiniFinder. My instant reaction was “who the fuck would want that?” combined with a shudder at the idea of being infantilized and restricted like that… but there was an obvious button to escape the context.
I don’t mind how things are set up now that I know my way out. But it wasn’t at all obvious how to get to Preferences (and I did try the Go menu but must have fatfingered the path wrong or something, it didn’t work) aside from enabling root and going in as root.
AHunter3, you can’t reliably delete preference by deleting the preference file anymore, anyway. They’re cached by the system, and in many (most) cases, the OS will replace the deleted .plist file with the cached version.
Instead you’ll have to use (from Terminal) defaults delete name-of-the-file-without-extension, instead. This will clear the file and the cache.
Sorry, what? Since when does the OS put any system-critical files like kexts in ~/Library? The boot process involves /System/Library and a bit of /Library (both of which are duly hidden), but the system is up and running before it touches any ~/ files. Unless you make some kind of change to the shutdown procedure, messing with files in ~/Library will only hose the account, not make the system unbootable.
I found my way to the hidden directories in less than a minute using the Finder’s Go menu. If you think you need to get into there often, I would open it from the Go menu, grab the prefs folder and drop it on the sidebar (if you need other directories, you will be able to cmd-up-arrow from there). For a muggle-user, it is probably not a good idea to have Library exposed all the time – it confuses them and creates visual clutter.
The /System and /Library folders were invisible from the beginning of MacOS X.
The ~/Library folder was not. And several applications stick things in there that users are expected to edit manually in order for the application to work. X-Assist for example creates its menus based on the contents inserted manually by the user in ~/Library/Favorites/X-Assist Items.
OK, it (X-Assist) hasn’t been updated in awhile. So? The decision to make ~/Library freaking invisible is a change in OS X behavior. There should be less hidden ways to change that.
(There should also, of course, be ways to restore the ^#$@!@#& scrollbar arrows in scroll bars. I’d pay $100 in shareware fee for a hack that would put the damn things back especially for horizontal scrolling… but I digress)
You may be thinking of /usr, /bin, /lib, /etc, /var, and stuff like that, which were always literally hidden. I have 10.5 on my G5 and /System and /Library are not hidden.
Not really.
Users are supposed to be running with standard privileges, which means that they can’t do any damage to /System or /Library. But even under standard privileges, a user can mess up his system pretty thoroughly by playing around in ~/Library.
Now, the fact that most users are Admins, is a separate problem…
