Show Hidden Files For Mac Os X

Some Mac users may want to remove some unused or redundant hidden files because they occupy precious disk space. How to View Hidden Files in Modern Versions of macOS Modern versions of macOS offer a convenient way to reveal invisible files: all you need to know is a keyboard shortcut. View Hidden Files and Folders in the Open/Dialog. While the Finder doesn’t offer a graphical option to let you find those hidden files and folders, the Open and Save dialog on Mac OS X does. To view hidden files and folders in the Open/Save dialog, just press Command+Shift+Period (that’s the.

Viewing Hidden Files and Folders is extremely easy, well that is if you are using Windows Operating System, as you can just select view hidden files and folder option in it to toggle the display, but I did not even recognise that there are hidden files and folders in Mac OS.

Until recently when I hot unplugged a Portable HDD from the Smart TV, When I connected it to my computer I found that some folders are missing but the available the disk space hasn’t changed. Which means the files on the disk are still there.

So at this time I remembered that there are Hidden Folders and Files, so I just opened my Terminal checked the Directory Listing (ls) for that Drive there I saw various files and folder that where not displayed in the Finder app.

View Hidden Folder Mac

As you can see in the above image in the terminal we can dozens of various files and folders whereas in the same location in the Finder application there are only six visible folders, rest of them are all hidden.

Mac Show Hidden Files Sierra

So to view the Hidden Files and Folder we need to just run this code in the terminal

Whereas to once again hide them just run the following code :

Repeating this process everytime you want to hide and display hidden files and folders is just not productive and waste of time. So you can just create new alias in terminal and use them everytime you want to hide and show hidden file and folders.

Creating alias to Show hidden files and folders

1. Open Terminal App
2. In Terminal open .bash_profile file using your favourite text editor
3. Add the following code in the file (to insert press i if you are using vim)
4. Now save the file. (if you are using vim then type :wq)
5. Now refresh the file in terminal by entering the following code in the terminal
6. Now whenever you want to view hidden files and folders just type showFiles in the terminal and hideFiles to hide them once again.

With this you can view hidden Files and Folders whenever you want. Well this solution is a little difficult for users who hardly every uses terminal.

So I also found an Application for Mac which does this little trick nicely, that application is called Funter the application is extremely useful for everyone even if you are good with terminal as it gives you the option to search inside hidden files and folders.

Advertisement

It common for most of us to use the same portable storage device with both our PC and Mac computer. While this works flawlessly, but there is one problem that most of us would have faced. When you are on windows, you can easily hide or view hidden files and folders, but on a mac there’s no such option.

If you have hidden files and folders on your portable storage device while using windows, then you would have already know that its not possible to view those hidden files and folder on a mac computer.

Although there are no options for viewing hidden files and folders on mac, but with the help of the terminal and a few lines of code, you can easily view hidden files and folders on a Mac. This is not a official method but a simple workaround.

Show Hidden Files On Mac Os X

Advertisement

For those who want to view hidden files and folders on a mac, here’s how you can do so.

Show All Files Mac

How to View Hidden Files and Folders on Mac OS X Yosemite.

Note: The following instructions have been tried and tested on Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite.

Open Terminal on your Mac and Type in the following command and press enter.

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -boolean true ; killall Finder

With this you can now view all the hidden files and folders on your mac.

Show Hidden Files For Mac Os X 10.7

How to Hide Files and Folders on Mac OS X Yosemite.

Now if you want to revert back the changes that you made earlier, you can type in the following command in the terminal and press enter.

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -boolean false ; killall Finder

(Visited 429 times, 1 visits today)

Last modified: December 3, 2014