MikeSel

any ideas how to change folder from hidden to visible permanently? renaming using dot in front not working for user/library for instance….

Thanks a ton. Had 30GB missing on my macbook air. It seems it was a MobileSync folder, 30 bloody GB! I now have half my hard drive back, thanks a lot.

Mike. Its people like you that make the Apple world continue to go round. After hours of frustration looking for Lotus Notes files hidden under the Library folder I used your recommendation and resolved all my issues. Thank you so much. 

Not working as of 10/2/11

Nothing happens, no change, hidden files still showing

Thanks – Worked nice

WORKS NICELY!

This is great user friendly tutorial. Thanks. 

Thank you so much! I need to uninstall a program and I can’t completely uninstall it unless I can see hidden files. 

Beautiful. Very clearly explained.

I took this to the next step and created a “toggle alias”, and if somebody has an api method to do the relaunch of finder, the function will be complete

I put the following in my .bashrc:
toggle_hidden() { val=`defaults read com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles` case $val in YES) newval=NO ;; NO) newval=YES ;; esac defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles $newval  && echo display all $newval}

alias th=”toggle_hidden”

thanks man!

Thanks Mike, works like a charm.

Do you know how a file I use regularly would somehow go invisible for no reason?  How do I make that one file visible again permanently, without making everything visible? 

I’ve written a small cocoa tool which wraps exactly these commands into an interface which resides in the toolbar. Finder restarting is also supported: http://filetoggle.huesforalice.com/

I feel like I’m missing something here. After pasting the command into Terminal, why the reference to the “alt” key, which doesn’t exist on a Mac? Where is the Finder icon I’m supposed to click on?

OK, what I’m trying to do: on startup I get the message that the file Library/StartupItems/ProTecb cannot launch. No idea what that is, but I want to trash it. However, I don’t see any files in the StartupItems folder, and it doesn’t show up in a Spotlight search, so figure it must be invisible.

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE killall Finder

will do the job. if you have trouble, you should copy paste the whole line only until TRUE and then type killall Finder by hand.

and then to reverse:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE

hit enter and then type:

killall Finder

hit enter and magic done.

ps. I post that because YES or NO commands didn’t work for me

Holding the alt key and right clicking the finder icon didn’t work for me (Lion 10.7.4)
Instead, I clicked the apple logo on the top left and went to force quit then clicked on ‘Finder’ then ‘Relaunch’

Automating this script into a toggler is really quite simple…
Launch -> /Aplications/Automator
Select what type of workflow you would like. I feel a service is a good choice for this so go ahead and;
Select -> Service
At the top of the window there should be 2 combo-boxes.
Select -> no input
Select -> Finder.app
Drag -> Run shell script; from the left panel to the right and enter the following:

is_shown=$(defaults read com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles)
if [ $is_shown != "YES" ]
then
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES
else
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles NO
fi

(You may have to retype the quotes around the “YES” in the if statement).

Below that
Drag -> Ask for confirmation and enter a message to the effect of “Do you want to relaunch finder? This will cancel any file transfers etc.”

Under that,
Drag -> Run shell script and enter killall Finder

Save it, naming it whatever you want it to appear as under the services submenu of the Finder menu.

With Finder in the foreground, click Finder in the top left -> down to Services and click your newly created Service.

I hope this is found to be useful to some people.

Thanks Mike! This is EXACTLY what I needed… followed your instructions and it worked perfectly. Once I found what I was looking for (the MobileSync file – why does it need to be hidden, anyway??) I created an alias for it to keep available in case I need to find it again. Easy Breezy! Thanks a bunch!!

Hi, I found this useful and even able to view my hidden folders initially. Now I have a new problem which is I can’t view the files in the folder.. Its like hidden too. There’s even nothing in the utility folder. Can someone please2 help! Greatly appreciate it!

Thanks a ton for this info. I accidentally saved one Excel Spreadsheet in the Outlook Temp folder and it had 3 hours of calculation I did for one project. Was not able to retrieve it, however, i could see it. Then I googled and landed on this link and it worked for me. And, Special thanks to T Hazlett for the automating script info.

Thank you so much this was so helpful i had a heck of time finding an applications support file and this was just what i needed!

Thanks very much to everyone that contributed to this post. The comment by T Hazlett to use Automator did exactly what I needed too.