[samsontan]

In spotlight, when i type application support, there are 2 folders
1st - "user">library>application support
2nd - my HardDrive>library>application support
I don't quite understand this.. can anyone give an elaboration on it? there was once i cut and paste 1 to the other. It's not suppose to be the way right, because it's 2 totally different folder right?

[Sherman Homan]

Careful here! There are as many Application Support folders as there are users, plus one for root. So if you have five user accounts you will find six Application Support folders. This is as it should be. The support folder at the root level of your hard drive provides the support files for any application for any user. If the program is installed in the Applications folder and the Application Support folder is in the Library at the root level, then the program and its support files would be universally available to any user when they log in.

Conversely, if the Support folder is only in your personal User account, those support files would only be available to you, no other user would have access to them when they logged in.

[samsontan]

meaning there are 2 roots:
1 in harddrive
1 in user?
i'm the administrator no other accounts are present at the moment.. so is this all just normal?

[zro]

Yes, that is very normal.

There are other global (all users) and local (individual) folders with identical names inside the Library folders.

[CatOne]

no... "root" is a user.

There is one at the "root" of your HD... that is, at /Library/Application Support. It is for application settings that will be used by all users on the machine.

There are also user-specific folders at ~/Library/Application Support (that is, in your home folder). These are *not* shared between users of the computer. These are specific to each user... for example if you and someone else using the computer want different sets of Safari bookmarks, they would each go in ~/Library/Application Support/Safari/bookmarks.html