Coding under the Hammer
Show hidden files in the Finder
Sometimes when you are digging around in the under pinnings of Mac OS X, you need to access folders and files that are normally hidden by the OS. Thankfully there is preference in the Finder for this, which you can turn on and off in the Terminal.
The command is:
defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES
The Finder needs to be restarted for this change to take effect. Luckily there is a Terminal command for this too:
killall Finder
Once you are done playing around with hidden files, you can stop showing them by replacing YES with NO in the original terminal command.
defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles NO
It is as simple as that, but make sure your don’t break anything.
about 1 month ago
You can also use a handy little Dashboard widget called “hiddenfiles” to do this: http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/developer/hiddenfiles.html.
about 1 month ago
Thanks Steve, thats quite useful.
about 4 weeks ago
I heard this tip a while back—so useful. One thing I’d add, though: killing the Finder is a bit unnecessary. It’s probably harmless, but I say that you shouldn’t kill a process when you can quit it nicely. If you run the commands:
defaults write com.apple.finder QuitMenuItem -bool TRUE
osascript -e ‘tell app “Finder” to quit’
you can quit the Finder like a normal application, from the menu bar or command-Q.
about 2 weeks ago
True Benjamin, I didn’t know you can do that. thanks for the tip