Comments on: How To Show Hidden and Protected Files in OS X Finder

By: Joel Godin

Joel Godin — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 21:09:55 +0000

You came up on Google number 2 for the search “how to see hidden files mac” fyi

By: Anuj Gakhar

Anuj Gakhar — Fri, 16 May 2008 22:28:05 +0000

I am a new MAC switcher from Windows and its really annoying that I cant have hidden files visible without spending money on some add-on software. I just want to open apache conf files and edit them and want to be able to browse to them in Finder. I could probably do this in some text editor but thats another story…no free text editor as well…atleast not to my knowledge. But obviously this should be part of the OS like others said.

By: Pac Mac

Pac Mac — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 04:28:16 +0000

Thanks for the Info…

By: » How To Stop The Creation of .DS_Store Files : devnulled: A stream for software developers and engineers

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 07:00:00 +0000

[...] At the request of a reader, I went ahead and researched what .DS_Store Files are, and how prevent MacOS X from creating them. In a nutshell, .DS_Store files are created by Finder to store preferences: .DS_Store (Desktop Services Store) is a hidden file created by Apple Inc’s Mac OS X operating system to store custom attributes of a folder such as the position of icons or the choice of a background image. By default, Mac OS X will create a .DS_Store file in every folder that it accesses, even folders on remote systems (for example, folders shared over a SMB or AFP connection) and even if the user has only customized the appearance of the folder by moving its Finder window. This is in contrast to the preexisting system for the same purpose used in previous versions of the Macintosh Finder, which would merely place a number of invisible files at the root of the volume being accessed (even on alien filesystems), always storing the settings and metadata for all of the folders in the entire volume within this single set of files. [...]

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 05:47:26 +0000

Another question about hidden files: Does anyone know if I can delete files in a hidden folder called “.Trash”? I have 4.5GB of files in this folder and they’re things I thought I deleted about two weeks ago.

By: Stefan

Stefan — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 01:22:25 +0000

well, this enables to see *several* hidden files in Finder.

however, I still can’t see my .bashrc file in my home and some other dot-files (like the .profile file or the .ssh folder).

anyone any idea how I can make those visible in Finder? (I’m on 10.5.1)

thx & greetings from Germany,
Stefan.

By: arif

arif — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 06:19:01 +0000

@ Glenn
it’s probably not working b/c the code you posted enables default behaviour ie. don’t show hidden files

change the FALSE to TRUE in the snippet you posted and you’ll be fine

By: menneke

menneke — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 16:41:21 +0000

@ Glenn

It still works for me in 10.5.1. The invisible files and folder icons now have this washed out look, the others look normal (more or less like in Windows I believe).

By: Glenn

Glenn — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 20:23:14 +0000

FYI. The ‘defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE’ tip no longer works in OS X Leopard (10.5). I have not yet found a workaround.

By: Brandon Harper

Brandon Harper — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 22:00:12 +0000

@pan69

Just created an entry just for you:

http://devnulled.com/content/2.....ore-files/