Show Hidden Files in Mac Finder

By  on  

Setting up a new machine is a great time for me to write blog posts about configuration settings that I'd forgotten to document.  Much of the time I refer back to this post to figure out how I did things like Add Dock Separators and add support for Xbox controllers.

One important configuration detail developers like myself need is the ability to view hidden and dot files from within Finder:

Finder Hidden Files

To show hidden files within Finder, execute the following from the command line terminal:

# Always show hidden files
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES

# Reset Finder for the settings to take effect
killall Dock

You'd think your machine was empty until you see the mountain of hidden files that macOS hides by default!  I understand why Apple hides these files by default:  they want the machine to seem simple for most users. Us developers, however, need to know where all the skeletons are!

Recent Features

  • By
    CSS Gradients

    With CSS border-radius, I showed you how CSS can bridge the gap between design and development by adding rounded corners to elements.  CSS gradients are another step in that direction.  Now that CSS gradients are supported in Internet Explorer 8+, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome...

  • By
    CSS 3D Folding Animation

    Google Plus provides loads of inspiration for front-end developers, especially when it comes to the CSS and JavaScript wonders they create. Last year I duplicated their incredible PhotoStack effect with both MooTools and pure CSS; this time I'm going to duplicate...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Introducing MooTools ScrollSpy

    I've been excited to release this plugin for a long time. MooTools ScrollSpy is a unique but simple MooTools plugin that listens to page scrolling and fires events based on where the user has scrolled to in the page. Now you can fire specific...

  • By
    Send Email Notifications for Broken Images Using jQuery AJAX

    It's usually best to repair broken image paths as soon as possible because they can damage a website's credibility. And even worse is having a user tell you about it. Using jQuery and PHP, you can have your page automatically notify you of broken...

Discussion

  1. Cmd + Shift + .

    I found it much quicker. Have a great day!

  2. Easy to think about it. Cmd + Shift + dot (like a dotfiles — hidden files in mac OS)

  3. I’ve setup two aliases for this so it’s easy to toggle between the modes.

    alias showHiddenFiles='defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES; killall Finder'
    alias hideHiddenFiles='defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles NO; killall Finder'
  4. Ivan Čurić

    Or you can use ⌘+ ⇧ + .

  5. Tobsen

    There is an easier way to do this. Just press ⌘⇧. in the Finder or open/save dialog.

  6. Dave

    When did this come out??? ⌘+ ⇧ + .

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!