MacOS – Grayed out folder won’t open in finder

finderfoldersmacospermissionterminal

I've never see this before.

enter image description here

Here's the facts:

  • It appears to be grayed out in the finder
  • I can not open it by clicking
  • I can move the folder
  • The permissions are set to 777 (overkill i know)
  • I can rename the folder with the mv command
  • I can view the contents of the folder with ls
  • When I ls (list) the contents of the parent dir I can see it without -a (show hidden files)
  • The date is set to from before I was born.
  • I believe this folder to have been a copy of another

I have a folder and I can't open it. It appears to be grayed out in the finder.

Best Answer

I had the same issue with an account folder, which I restored from a backup via rsync. The problem seemed to be the corrupt or missing creation date. After setting it manually the folder was acting normal again. I used the SetFile command from XCode's command line tools. So this should solve the issue:

SetFile -d '12/31/1999 23:59:59' will-not-open
Related Question