Show Hidden Files 12
Finder
Hey
Did you know that your hard drive is full of hidden files. All of them are hidden to keep your computer running smoothly. But every so often you may want to view those files to see if your computer is acting out of the ordinary or you have mistakenly named something starting with a dot (.) and want to find the file again. There are three ways you can do this. Through an application, through a preference pane, or good old command line. Each have there pros and cons.
Application Method
The application method is probably the simplest. With a simple application such as Houdini, you can at the click of a button hide or show files or folders. As well as this it also enables you to quickly hide folders on your hard drive so they are hidden from view. This works very well if you want to hide your “important files” from people, and don’t want to use the password protect folder method.
Preference Pane Method
Another simple method of hiding files is using a special preference pane called Secrets. I posted about earlier. It enables you to show and hide folders using one of the many options, within the program. It also has a whole lot more, to enable you to access the deepest parts of your operating system.
Terminal Method
Probably the hardest to do but uses the least amount of work and has the most potential to go wrong, that is the Terminal Method. If you open up terminal (Applications > Utilities) and type the following:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder
This will show you all of the hidden files and folders on your operating system. If you want to reverse the command replace TRUE with FALSE.
Personally my favourite method is to use the secrets pane, I find it is the quickest method of them all. To conclude if you want to use these commands I suggest you don’t change anything. Like my parents said, look with your eyes and not with your hands. I seriously don’t recommend you change anything at all, other wise there would be dire consequences for you system.
If you want to learn more about these sort of tricks I recommend, Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The Missing Manual or Mac OS X Unix Toolbox. Both develop this skills further and have lots of other types of tricks like this.
If you want to keep up with the latests post from Mac Tricks And Tips I recommend you subscribe to the RSS Feed.
Where To Next?
12 Responses to “Show Hidden Files”
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1
Thank you very much! This was very helpful especially to web developers working with .htaccess.
Comment By Javier Onglao on October 30th, at 11:46 pm
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I prefer the method shown here…
http://theappleblog.com/2007/04/30/quick-tip-showhide-hidden-files/Its not extra software and its not having to remember terminal syntax
Comment By Nathan on November 6th, at 7:37 am
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Another way web developers can edit their .htaccess files is to use text wrangler’s open hidden file option. This also keeps your Finder clean looking.
http://www.barebones.com/products/TextWrangler/
Comment By Chris on March 19th, at 8:43 pm
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4
thanks a million this worked perfectly
Comment By louanoloa on July 20th, at 3:47 pm
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Great. I liked the contrasting methods. Most people only talk about one way.
Comment By Erik Stone on August 31st, at 7:24 pm
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here’s how to do it with a shell script — i find this the easiest, especially if you’re already in Terminal a lot:
http://macmartine.com/blog/2009/11/shell-script-to-showhide-hidden-files-on-os-x.htmlComment By James on November 19th, at 6:25 pm
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7
Good freeware application for http://code.google.com/p/hide-unhide
Comment By Oris on November 24th, at 11:21 pm
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Hi there,
I tried this out because I had a problem with installing software on my mac. Basically it was and is still saying that my installation disk is full although I have 98GB free space on my HD. I don’t know what to do? Next, I tried the terminal route, to see if there were any missing files or possible aliases which were determining that my HD was full but with no joy. I didn’t change anything, move anything or delete anything. So I am still stuck with that. However now I in terminal I have input FALSE as the command, but I can still see all my hidden files and it’s really disruptive. All my files are lightened the same as the hidden ones and I can see everything and I want to revert back to normal but the FALSE isn’t working. I get this error.
Last login: Tue Dec 8 02:36:52 on ttyp1
Welcome to Darwin!
laurapidcock:~ jackoldham$ defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE killall Finder
2009-12-08 02:42:06.265 defaults[284] Unexpected argument killall; leaving defaults unchanged.
laurapidcock:~ jackoldham$Please help me?????? I just want it to go all back to normal like you said in your blog if you type FALSE…
Comment By Jack on December 8th, at 3:43 am
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Problem solved, I had to relaunch finder. :)
Comment By Jack on December 8th, at 3:57 am
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Hi i just used the
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE killall Finder in my terminal which worked,
now i can’t get out of it-
i typed in defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE killall Finderand i get the message: Unexpected argument Finder; leaving defaults unchanged.
what can i do? thanks!Comment By Sam on December 10th, at 2:26 am
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11
check the space between FALSE and killall
Comment By Tristan on December 22nd, at 12:30 pm
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First, type
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
then, press enter. Now type
killall Finder
and you’re done :)
Comment By Lydia on February 21st, at 2:52 am
