Big Sur’s Hidden Containers Folder

Rico Becker:

Apple has restricted access to ~/Library/Containers/ in Finder on macOS Big Sur.

It’s only showing one folder in my case. In Terminal I can see that everything is still there.

This was quite a shock when I first saw it, because it looked like all my data was gone. As far as I can tell, there’s no setting (except maybe disabling SIP) to turn off this feature. This is going to be really annoying because I browse the Containers folder in Finder every day. I don’t understand what Apple is trying to do here, because:

• The Library folder is already hidden by default.
• Sandboxed apps are already prevented from accessing other apps’ containers.
• The folders in Containers are not actually getting additional protections (like some folders did in Catalina). They’re just hidden now.
• You can’t unhide them using Command-Shift-Period.

Previously:

• macOS 11.0 Big Sur Announced
• Security & Privacy in macOS 10.15 Beta
• Mojave Privacy Protection Aftermath
• Opening the User Library Folder
• Finder Keyboard Shortcut to Show Invisible Files

Update (2020-07-03): If you open the Library folder (not Containers itself) in List view and turn off groups, you can open the disclosure triangle and view the container folders. Some show their actual folder names, and others show the name of the app. The Finder’s “fake” view persists when System Integrity Protection is turned off, and it also gets in the way of the Command-Option-G “Go to Folder” keyboard command in file open panels.

Update (2020-07-27): Rico Becker:

You know what is really great about macOS 11 beta 3? We’ve got our containers back! \o/

Update (2020-07-29): Jeff Johnson:

Containers are back in b3 but still have weird display names, with sometimes hilarious results.

Update (2022-08-26): Matthias Gansrigler:

How is this considered remotely acceptable by Apple’s macOS Finder team?

Good luck finding the correct folder. 🙈

I use colored labels to mark the “right” ones.

Update (2022-08-29): Uli Kusterer:

I would have expected “show all extensions” to implicitly show the real names as well, at least.

If you need a GUI workaround, hold down option while choosing “Get Info” to get “Show Inspector”, then it will show you the name of whatever you select in “Name & Extension”.