Concerning where the files are: The folders sit right to each other.
If interested in path, you can see it in my screenshots above.
And in fact these are currently empty folders, waiting for footprints to be created.
I feel the folder icon below the list and your workflow are supposed to be the same, but to be dead sure, I step-wise recreated what you have written. It doesn’t work for global, whatever I try. They just will not show up.
This is the result after using the + below the list. I guess the result is quite the same as what I had above:
Clicking this folder icon after this + sign and you still don’t get it showing?
Your nickname starts with a “k” so it should show after"jumper" in the PCB editor Global Footprint Browser List.
I do not understand why a project specific added library is visible while a global library is not.
Just to exclude there is something weird with the path names, can you create such a global library in a completely different and simple path?
Haha yes, I did exactly this, really 
Regarding ‘+’ or ‘black folder’ i just tested it on the project libraries tab.
I could add a library either way and it would show up without any issues.
But both ways don’t work on global tab for me.
Good approach. I created a new folder in the default directory for footprint libraries.
Also doesn’t work.
Does this mean you found the library?
Unfortunately no. Last status is global doesn’t work.
So you can add a library to the global table, KiCad creates the directory, but does not show it in the library table ???
Do the enties appear in the correct fp-lib-table file?
there is a fp-lib-table file in each project (if it has project specific libraries), and there is one in your configuration dir. Maybe that file is read-only.
This limitation is probably already automatically lifted:
HOLY COW it works.
That one gave me a pretty good hint. Usually program folders on Windows tend to be protected.
I actually manually created the folder in Kicads lib directory. This worked since I am probably elevated and Kicad at runtime maybe not.
Long story short: I tried executing Kicad with admin rights and all of a sudden all libraries showed up, as if nothing ever happened.
Need to meddle around with data rights a little on the folder then this works i guess.
I think we can consider this problem solved and a bug more incurred by Windows than by Kicad.
Thanks to both of you for helping me with this fairly stupid isse 
Absolutely not stupid… I just learned to not take for granted that everyone always uses read/write locations.
Actually to maybe follow this up on a final thought.
@pauldvh you said there is a fp-lib-table that keeps track of my global libraries in my “config dir”. Where could this be located? If I search on the Kicad folder I can only find it on templates and demo projects. Neither of them have been changed recently (for my now working global test libs).
Because I wonder. Obviously something fails internally if you do not have suffiecient rights at some point. This puzzles me a little, since a program by default should be setup in a way that it can handle it’s basic configuration let’s say (I did not meddle with it, clean install on Win11). Moreover maybe it should check for if this add-library-action works and if not throw an error.
Maybe this could be something for development.
I don’t run windoze myself, but the answer is here:
There are quite a lot of articles in KiCad’s FAQ
I still don’t know the exact cause of your problem though. If it was read-only then I would assume the entries would not have become visible when you ran KiCad as admin.
Ah thats one for your score Didn’t expect to find that on FAQ.
Funnily I just noticed that after I started it as admin one time also the language switched from English to German permanently.
Your last addition is also what I don’t quite understand.
Because if this Manage Footprint Libraries window represents the contents of that file, then it was stored correctly. Its then just like the footprint editor itself didn’t refresh correctly.
Also the Roaming directory should be under full acces by user-level, so that shouldn’t be the problem. Usually just stuff like C:\Program Files\ (where it is in fact installed) is protected by the UAC. But also then it should be able to modify “it’s own stuff”.
All in all something is a little strange here. But thats probably in the nature of Windows 11 
I am guessing you installed KiCad more then once (maybe one of them as admin?) and different configuration files are getting mixed up. KiCad does not remove the configuration files when you uninstall it. Mabye a system wide search for the fp-lib-table file discloses other instances of that file.
This guess is wrong 
It’s actually my first Kicad install on a new machine. Also I am the only user of the machine.
One interesting addition:
I now do not need to start with admin rights anymore and can freely add and delete global libs.
Didn’t change anything. Maybe it needed that one time admin …
BTW, this is a bad idea. When you update KiCad this folder is likely to disappear. You should keep your personal libraries in user space, not system space.
BTW, a winblows shortcut (I can verify that it still works in Win11) to get to the user settings folder (for all your installed programs) is to type %APPDATA% (case insensitive if you want to release the shift-button between the % symbols) into the windows explorer path bar.
Hey @Andy_P and @SembazuruCDE,
thanks for the hints, all of this different location trying was just for cornering the problem. Of course I know it’s not the best idea to mix your own libraries into KiCads folder
My libraries usually reside in my Nextcloud for syncing across devices.
I am still not sure why some functions like adding libraries, changing language, and maybe others started working, after I started KiCad with elevated rights once only, but I take it
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