Quick Tip: Show/Hide Hidden Files
A few months ago I started to mess around with a .htaccess file in connection with one of my websites. When I transferred the file from my web server to my desktop via FTP, the file never showed up. I tried again and again, but that dang file would never show up.
After a little searching, I realized that .htaccess is one of the files that OS X hides by default so that you don’t accidentally delete and/or alter it. However, there are times that you need access to those files. Unfortunately Apple hasn’t made it as simple as toggling a menu item in Finder. Instead, you’re going to to have to write out a line or two of code. But if you follow the following few steps, you’ll be able to use Automator to create a plugin that you can use to toggle the view of hidden files from within Finder.
Step 1: Automator Actions
After opening Automator, select Automator from within the Applications Library on the left-hand side. You’ll now see a number of different built-in actions that are available to the Automator application.
Select Run Shell Script from the list of available actions, and drag it into your workflow.
Type (or paste in) the following code into the Run Shell Script text box:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder
Step 2: Save As Plugin
Now that your Automator workflow is finished (yes, that's it), choose File > Save As Plugin... and choose Finder as the Application. Save your plugin-in as ShowHiddenFiles or something else descriptive.
Now, from the Finder or desktop, simply right-click (or cmd-click) and the contextual menu will appear. Choose Automator > ShowHiddenFiles and the Finder will restart showing all your hidden files.
Step 3: Repeat
Seeing all those hidden files can start to be annoying and can lead to some unfortunate accidents if you happen to delete something you shouldn't. So as soon as you're done with the hidden files, simply edit the above workflow by substituting "FALSE" for "TRUE" and save the new plug-in as HideHiddenFile.
Now showing and hiding system files is as easy as a click away.
Tweet This (11)
Adam on April 30th, 2007 at 6:43 am
You sure this works?
I keep getting “Workflow Failed”, so have I missed anything?
vanni on April 30th, 2007 at 7:35 am
I use an AppleScript called “Show Hide Invisible Files 1.5″ …dead simple.
J. T. AppleScripts – http://216.127.146.15/~j_gar@trysb.net/
Grkness on April 30th, 2007 at 9:00 am
It works perfectly fine. Vanni: you could use third party software however it takes the fun out of learning the intricacies of your Mac.
vanni on April 30th, 2007 at 9:30 am
@grness. you are right. i just finished your tutorial and it was indeed fun and informative. thanks!
Dan Diemer on April 30th, 2007 at 11:33 am
or, install MainMenu and have this one click away, along with the handy Repair Disk Permissions
Si on April 30th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
What would be great is if you could apply it to just a single folder, or hierarchy of folders. Specifically, I have Apache installed so I’d like to see all the hidden files in the htdocs folder, but nowhere else. That would be cool.
James on April 30th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
I get workflow failed on both as well…
Staff Comment Jason Guthrie, TheAppleBlog on April 30th, 2007 at 8:40 pm
Adam and James…
Always check the log when troubleshooting a “Workflow Execution Failed” message. To view the log, select ‘Show Log’ in the ‘View’ menu. If the fix isn’t obvious, post another comment with the log results… maybe we can help.
matthijs on May 1st, 2007 at 12:24 am
I get a workflow failed as well. “An error 2007-05-01 09:20:18.830 defaults[251] Unexpected argument Finder; leaving defaults unchanged. 91) occured in Run Shell”
matthijs on May 1st, 2007 at 1:01 am
Strange, because if I run the commands from the Terminal, they work fine. I’m on OS X 10.4.9 by the way.
heracek on May 3rd, 2007 at 12:10 am
Replacing newline with ‘;’ works:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE; killall Finder
Uli Kusterer on May 5th, 2007 at 6:37 am
You shouldn’t use killal. Use osascript to ‘tell application “Finder” to quit’. killall forces the Finder to quit and it’ll forget all its window positions, while the AppleScript solution makes Finder exit gracefully.
Ankur on May 8th, 2007 at 2:12 am
Quicksilver has a “Run command in Shell” command, so you can also set up a trigger for that extra speed boost.
dandam on July 24th, 2007 at 10:27 am
If you have workflow problems, maybe because you copied the code from this page. The code contains a line break. Remove it in the Automator (add it again, if you like) and things work fine.
Leastways, that solved it for me.
Mattebo on September 5th, 2007 at 9:24 pm
“You shouldn’t use killal. Use osascript to ‘tell application “Finder” to quit’. killall forces the Finder to quit and it’ll forget all its window positions, while the AppleScript solution makes Finder exit gracefully.”
I tried this but I forgot to add another ‘Run Applescript’ to the workflow stating ‘tell application “Finder” to run.’ I eventually figured it out. I didn’t like having to relaunch the Finder from the dock.
Daryl on September 13th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
This is an awesome tip. Thanks!
Mr. Buyer on October 7th, 2007 at 9:10 pm
Dude
I have had my iBook for two years and haven’t really used terminal or Automator. That easily worked for me. Now, can we delete the plugins?
vytas on January 11th, 2008 at 6:36 am
i love apple and people who share skills! thanks for tip. very usefull
tomg on January 11th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
this tip is exactly the solution that i was looking for. i’ve found a lot of terminal command answers to showing hidden files, which is great, but adding show and hidefiles to a menu is perfect. thanks
brb on January 19th, 2008 at 6:39 am
“defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE && killall Finder” … that stops the newline also.
mellow on February 10th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
I used the osascript to ensure that the folders I currently have open will reappear correctly.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSEosascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to quit';
osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to activate';
angry on March 8th, 2008 at 1:38 am
i am VERY angry at this
i can not make the hidden files disappear again
can someone please help me?
Promitheas13 on May 2nd, 2008 at 3:55 am
Don’t be angry and simply do the following:
1) Open your terminal
2) Enter the following command and then enter
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles NO
3) That will hide your files… now enter the last command to reset your finder and press enter again:
killall Finder
4) You are ready now ;-)
p.s. I don’t think the above from “mellow” works on terminal so, it’s something i don’t suggest. You can try if you want though!
osascript -e ‘tell application “Finder” to quit’;
osascript -e ‘tell application “Finder” to activate’;
Jimbows XP on June 20th, 2008 at 6:23 am
Works like a charm. Thank you.
I was tired of looking up the command everytime I needed to make visible hidden files.
Melanie on June 27th, 2008 at 9:44 am
I just did this and it worked great. Thanks! But I thought when I did this, it would change it for my computer across the board, but it didn’t. What I mean is, even when I can see hidden files and folders in the Finder, when I am in Safari and need to browse for something via a “Choose File” link on a webpage, none of the hidden stuff shows up. So apparently this doesn’t work in Safari just because it’s set up in Finder. How do I see hidden files and folders when browsing for them in Safari? I don’t suppose it’s as simple as changing the .finder part of the code to .safari … ??? I would try it, but I don’t want to mess anything up. This is the webpage I’m trying to do it at: http://www.bluechippy.co.uk/runadjusterweb/.
Regi on June 29th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
Greate tutorial. ALso, the opportunity of interactive with your mac worths for the work
Adam Pieniazek on July 24th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Great tip, though like Si, I’d love to see a way to enable/disable showing hidden files per folder or per hierarchy.
If anyone knows how to do so, please send me an e-mail (mylastname.myfirstname@gmail.com). I’ll hook you up with a shout-out on my blog or whatever for the favor!
sopheak on August 10th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
this tip is exactly the solution that i was looking for. i’ve found a lot of terminal command answers to showing hidden files, which is great, but adding show and hidefiles to a menu is perfect. thanks
KIM on August 14th, 2008 at 3:06 am
I am a new Mac-user [Mac OS X, version 10.5.4] and have tried to follow the instructions regarding Show/Hide Hidden Files by Jason Guthrie on April 30, 2007. However, when I open Automator [through Spotlight] the “picture” I get differs from the one in the tutorial: first I have to select a “starting point to open a new workflow” [Custom, Files & Folders, Music & Audio, etc.]. Secondly I have a different listing under “Library” and Automator is not listed there. I also do not have the column “Action”. In short, it all looks different. Can anyone advise me how to follow this tutorial with these differences in mind?
Thanks in advance,
KIM
ChrisP on August 17th, 2008 at 9:38 am
I tried #21 Mellow
and it worked very well for me
It paused a long time the first time it worked with no DESKTOP icons!
I laughed … and suddenly everything came to in about 45 seconds – FEW
All I did to swap between show and hide is make one TRUE and one FALSE and put it all into one single AUTOMATOR workflow apple SHELL script and SAVE AS PLUG IN
Show hidden files
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
osascript -e ‘tell application “Finder” to quit’;
osascript -e ‘tell application “Finder” to activate’;
Hide hidden files
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
osascript -e ‘tell application “Finder” to quit’;
osascript -e ‘tell application “Finder” to activate’;
now if some one wrote it like this to start with I would not have had to waste 2 minutes of my life!
Slavik Kaushan on September 15th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
Jason – you are my Angel!!!
Thank you for this solution – I had same shit with .htaccess few weeks ago and found only how to show file and get a lot of “new” item around – with your solution my desk is clean again ;)
to KIM – I’ve just got same screen as you – just open Automator in default view then go to Utilities>Run Shell Script
and then same as Jason wrote
Jason: thank you gain
KIM: good luck with Mac OS X ;)
Stingray on October 15th, 2008 at 8:45 am
ChrisP #30 thanks for your script. Note that if you copy and paste this into Automator it won’t work because the quotation marks have been changed to in and out marks (maybe by this blog?). It worked when I retyped the ” and ‘ marks.
Andrew on December 12th, 2008 at 10:30 am
Thanks for the great tip! One question: if I want to delete the plugin so it no longer appears in the context menu, how do I do this?
B-man on December 28th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
I heard you could archive your ipod on a PC by using the “show hidden files”, and then copy the hidden mp3 files to a hard drive. BTW, I tried this on my iPod and it did not work. No hidden files appeared.
William Land on December 29th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Hi, this is pretty cool. Thank you. I found the original instructions to work the best. It seems maybe the problems mentioned in some of the earlier comments had to do with their being two lines of code, and when you copied and pasted from the example it saw it as only one line(aka post #14). So copy and paste each individually and it works great. Thanks again to Jason and everyone else.
nikolar on January 14th, 2009 at 4:48 am
Is it possible (I’m quite sure it is) to make the plug-in act as “Toggle Hidden Files”. You would need to ask for the value of
com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFilesand toggle it’s value in the script. Does anyone know how to do it?i could be write on August 18th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
finger?
isotonic on January 21st, 2009 at 7:54 pm
Very cool – thanks. I really should take a closer look at Automator.
Sanjeev on January 29th, 2009 at 12:16 am
Many thanks!! This saved me so much time.
Thanks again.
Sanjeev
Mark Priestap on February 10th, 2009 at 7:27 am
Really helpful thanks!
PoolS on March 14th, 2009 at 7:55 am
Pretty cool!
thanks!
marlowe on March 16th, 2009 at 10:29 am
Once I changed the line breaks this worked like a charm. Thanks for the tutorial!
Kamalarajan on March 25th, 2009 at 1:13 am
Hi Geeks,
Cheers for the tip. It’s awesome.
I am a new user of MAC and recently brought a mac bookpro. I really love it.
I found this really useful.
Regards,
S.Kamalarajan
Senior System Administrator
bill on April 11th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
this is cool. but when i open automator there is no applications folder in the library. any help please?
bill on April 11th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
nevermind i figured it out. thank you very much
jheyeL on April 21st, 2009 at 9:14 am
I know a lot about PC computers, but MAC is something new… thanks for this information, I’m learning a lot…
informabiz on June 6th, 2009 at 10:52 am
Good work mate.It’s quite useful for some like me who just switched from crap Windows to MAC.
hardwarekid on June 15th, 2009 at 11:53 pm
Thanks! works great in 10.5.7!
desibird on June 18th, 2009 at 6:38 am
Thats one good hack..!!
Cheers M8!! Keep coming with other tips too…!!
Johan on June 27th, 2009 at 5:27 am
Great hack! Now you can get that pesky trash folder into the Finder’s sidebar (I’m working with two monster screens and I’ve to travel all the way to the right to peek into it (yeah, I know, luxury problem ;-).
I got this from Screenmates:
drag the /Users/Home/.Trash hidden folder to the sidebar and bingo!
Thanx mate.
jarno on July 2nd, 2009 at 3:25 am
perfect!
Thanks!!
rui on July 4th, 2009 at 12:06 am
thanks a lot! you solved a lot of my problems in one go :)
Neil on July 5th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Great post thanks.
Recently bought a macbook pro and have been struggling with this bad boy!
sal on July 6th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
what does he mean when he says “simply edit the above workflow by substituting “FALSE” for “TRUE”
Jaco on July 29th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
Hi,
how do I remove from Automator the entries created for ShowHiddenFiles and HideHiddenFiles? I think I like better the once in a while option to use terminal.
thanks
Dan Shields on July 30th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
Brilliant. Worked great. Thanks.
william on August 19th, 2009 at 2:13 am
works perfectly, so simple and took 30 seconds,
thanks so much! :)
Joseph on August 23rd, 2009 at 3:04 pm
This worked great, thank you. But how do I now undo it? It is very important that I put it back to how it was.
william on August 23rd, 2009 at 7:57 pm
just repeat the same process but instead of writing TRUE write FALSE.
it’s in the 3rd paragraph in the post:
Step 3: Repeat
Seeing all those hidden files can start to be annoying and can lead to some unfortunate accidents if you happen to delete something you shouldn’t. So as soon as you’re done with the hidden files, simply edit the above workflow by substituting “FALSE” for “TRUE” and save the new plug-in as HideHiddenFile.
Joseph on August 23rd, 2009 at 9:45 pm
What I was asking was hot to remove the two options from the menu. So when you right click the desktop, hover more, then automator it doesnt show, “show hidden files” and hide hidden files. But I solved it.
open finder>go>go to folder…>~/Library/Workflows/Applications/Finder>delete the two files.
Mark on September 18th, 2009 at 11:29 am
I had this working on my system until I upgraded to Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard. Now, I don’t get the contextual menu listing Automator workflows. Any thoughts?
Conway on September 23rd, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Wow… that was sweet! easy as eating chips. I found the original post to be fantastic and it was easy to follow and it work like a charm.
Mahdieh on October 6th, 2009 at 9:28 am
OMG, That was an awesome trick. Thank you very much.
I have a question about virtual box on mac : I have installed windows xp in virtual box on mac, but USP ports doesn’t work.
Do you know how I could enable them???
Thank you so much
Jeremy Carlson on October 9th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Wow – thanks! Actually got me using Automator. I’ve looked at that thing before, never figured out how to use it, though I knew I wanted to.
Quick and VERY useful. I tried the other options, but the original worked best for me.
Jeremy Carlson on October 15th, 2009 at 9:28 am
Update – once I tried this a couple of times, the loss of my current Finder windows really bothered me. So I searched around, and found AppleScript for quitting/reactivating the Finder.
Preserving the current Finder windows is nice.
Now my Automator script looks like this:
[ Run Shell Script - has this: ]
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
[ Run AppleScript - has this: ]
activate application “Finder” –gives Finder focus
tell application “Finder”
quit
delay 2 –finder needs some time to save its state
activate application “Finder” –restart Finder
end tell
Hope this helps someone!
Wolf85 on October 22nd, 2009 at 12:43 pm
My parents used to torture me as a child. ,
Kenneth on October 26th, 2009 at 1:37 am
Hi, this method works perfectly. However it does not seem to apply immediately even when i close all the finder windows. It only shows all the hidden files when i re-start my mackbook. Any ideas?
Mac on November 19th, 2009 at 10:20 am
Here’s how to make a shell script to do this for you if you prefer just using Terminal
http://macmartine.com/blog/2009/11/shell-script-to-showhide-hidden-files-on-os-x.html