MacOS – How to show/hide invisible files and folders from Service menu

automatorfindermacosterminal

How to show/hide invisible files and folders from Service menu?

By default files and folders whose name start with . is invisible. In order to show them, you can use the following command in Terminal.

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -boolean true; killall Finder

To restore the default state, in which those files are hidden, use the following.

defaults delete com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles; killall Finder

How can I toggle the status of AppleShowAllFiles key without launching Terminal?

Best Answer

Apologies if this is a little off-topic from your question, but, in macOS Sierra you can toggle showing hidden files right in the Finder with Shift+cmd+.

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MacOS – AppleShowAllFiles Command not working in Mavericks OS X 10.9

It worked for me in 10.9. You should be using -bool TRUE (not just TRUE), although it worked for me either way. Also, are you running it as two commands (killall Finder is a second command)? The only other thing I can think of is that cfprefsd might have the old setting (or lack therof) cached, so you may have to shut it down it first. If I understand the setup right, that shouldn't be necessary, but just in case:

killall cfprefsd
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool TRUE
killall Finder

Best Answer

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