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chflags nohidden ~/Library
We've been running Lion for nearly a month, and that's actually one of the first things we did!
The greater question, and one I think Seth was trying to raise in the post, is why they hid the Library folder? At best it looks like a cosmetic fix — after all, it stands out amidst the rest of a users' home folder as something without a clear and finite purpose.
Better yet, if you're going to hide ~/Library, why not hide /System and /Library? After all, the default user has admin privileges, and you can do a lot more damage to your system tinkering around there.
It's an odd call on Apple's part, and doubtless it'll become part of the way we work with the OS over the years, and it will all make perfect sense. Right now at the outset, it's a sore thumb.
I debated whether or not to post a Terminal fix, with some CLI navigating of the folder. In the end, I decided on the more accessible of fixes. I concluded that the majority of people that would need to hit-up google to find the missing folder, would be users that would not feel comfortable dig around in the CLI.
Thanks for the comment, and thanks for visiting.
You can change this in Terminal, its a simple one line command:
chflags nohidden /users//library/
that will make it so the library folder is no longer hidden.
You can see the Library folder if you press the alt key whilst in the go menu. It [alt key] acts like a toggle switch for the Library folder.
Hi Shibu,
Thanks for the comment. Yeah, that should have made it in to the Part Six update. Thanks for pointing it out. We wrote all the "Fix Lion" post at one time and posted one at a time after the release (so documentarians was hard to come by, Apple being Apple). But a few days after we posted part three, someone sent me this article from MacWorld: 18 ways to view the ~/Library folder in Lion.
Thanks again for the comment.
The Command-Shift-G keybind for Go To Folder is really useful to remember, especially if you navigate around in Finder a lot. You can use ~ as an alias for /Users/"your short name". So you can Go To Folder "~/Library". Also, Go To Folder supports a weird variant of tab completion, so you can usually get away with:
[Command]-[Shift]-G ~/L[Tab][Enter]
HI Dan,
I have received several comment like yours to this post, power user type comments. When I wrote the post I had all that stuff in it, the CLI commands, how to make an alias, even the change flags setting. But in the end, I figured that people that need the post, were the least likely to know how to use Terminal.app. So I kept it simple and stuck to the finder and mouse clicks.
Thanks for the comment.
Hopefully, with all the comments on the post, the people how are uncomfortable with Terminal.app can use them to get comfertable.