MacOS – How does Finder decide if a file should be hidden

findermacos

There are quite a few files/direcotries under /. But Finder only shows 'System', 'Library', 'Users' and 'Applications'.

I create a directory called /mnt, and Finder shows it. Why? What is the difference between /mnt and other directories like /bin or /usr that makes it shown in Finder? Or how can I make /mnt hidden and make /bin shown?

Best Answer

I found the answer! It is controlled by the hidden flag. Open Terminal,

$ /bin/ls -Ol

will show you which files are flagged with hidden.

To make /mnt hidden, simply

$ sudo chflags hidden /mnt

To change back

$ sudo chflags nohidden /mnt

Cheers!

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Okay, so you can do it for whatever Unix program you want to create a wrapper for.

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Make it run the following script:

on run {input, parameters}
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If you really want to use some other editor in place of vim, you could replace /usr/bin/vim in the second line of the script with the path to whatever command you are trying use to open files from Mail.

MacOS – OS X Lion thesterious user cron job just does echo “PATH is $PATH”

launchd holds files in ~/Library/LaunchAgents for individual users.

Best Answer

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