Big Sur’s Hidden Containers Folder
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
You know what is really great about macOS 11 beta 3? We’ve got our containers back! \o/
Containers are back in b3 but still have weird display names, with sometimes hilarious results.
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.
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”.
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It’s still possible to see the content of the Containers folder in Finder by using the ‘as List’ view, with grouping set to ‘None’. Once you see the content of the Containers folder, you’ll see that the app identifiers of some folder are replaced by the app name.
Strange. I can browse the Containers folder just fine in the Finder. The only observable difference is folder names are “translated” to the corresponding app name (when the app is known) instead of displaying an ugly bundle identifiers. As far as I can tell, everything is there (and it’s a bit crowded); I even have three “Mail” folders.
There's something new on BS called ContainerManager. My theory is that this was added to support iOS apps on macOS. In Finder and in open dialogs, you see the Containers folder called "On My Mac", which is suspiciously like "On my iPhone" in Files app. In fact, I think this change was made specifically for open dialogs rather than Finder, because iOS apps wouldn't be dealing with Finder at all, but probably Finder and open dialogs share a lot of UI code. Thus, Finder looking weird is just a casualty of open dialogs getting rewritten for iOS apps on macOS.
Needless to say, this is all abomination.
>Once you see the content of the Containers folder, you’ll see that the app identifiers of some folder are replaced by the app name.
Maybe this is buggy mapping logic?
The big question for me is: Can disk sizing utilities still see inside the Containers folder? I'd like to keep scanning every now and then to make sure sandboxed apps aren't taking up space unexpectedly.
None of the tricks seem to work now (Big Sur 11.1) however you can open the hidden folders from terminal into finder with;
open -a "Finder" name-of-hidden-container
So, for years Apple have turned the screws to get devs to adopt their decidedly-imperfect sandbox, and Apple have now rewarded these devs by preventing customers from easily accessing their app data? Am I understanding the situation correctly?
For a few apps, Finder (in BS 11.0.1 and 11.1beta) is showing the ~/Library/Containers//Data/Documents folder as ~/Documents/. For example: BBEdit and iThoughtsX.
>So, for years Apple have turned the screws to get devs to adopt their decidedly-imperfect sandbox, and Apple have now rewarded these devs by preventing customers from easily accessing their app data? Am I understanding the situation correctly?
Best as I can tell, no, what they're trying to do (in a buggy manner, as of 11.0.1) isn't to hide anything, but rather to map the app folders inside the Containers folder to more user-friendly virtual paths.
Why they had to ship this feature in an buggy manner rather than wait until it's more solid is anyone's guess.
