desktopmacmacos
I recently had tried to make some hidden desktop icons on my desktop following the instructions found here. I am on Mac OS X Mountain Lion. I ended up somehow making every file a hidden file. The files are all visible but are just transparent and I cannot open some of them.
How do I make all of these files become unhidden files so they are no longer transparent and I can access them better?
In the terminal, do this:
defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool false && killall Finder
After this, there'll be nothing on your Desktop (but still in ~/Desktop, i.e. your Desktop Folder). It'll look like this:
Beautiful, isn't it? If you want to change it back:
defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool true && killall Finder
How did you restore permissions? Manually, or did you use the "Repair" feature in Disk Utilities?
Restoring from a Time Machine backup from before things went bad should work.
One thing you might try before restoring is to delete the Finder preferences. ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist then relaunch the Finder (Hold Option while selecting the Finder icon in the dock). The preference file will be regenerated with the system defaults.
Best Answer
You might have accidentally show the hidden files in Finder. Try this command to hide all the hidden files:
To show it again, change the BOOL value from NO to YES: