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.
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You sure this works?
I keep getting “Workflow Failed”, so have I missed anything?
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/
It works perfectly fine. Vanni: you could use third party software however it takes the fun out of learning the intricacies of your Mac.
@grness. you are right. i just finished your tutorial and it was indeed fun and informative. thanks!
or, install MainMenu and have this one click away, along with the handy Repair Disk Permissions
Main Menu – really simple! =) thanks
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.
I get workflow failed on both as well…
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.
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”
Strange, because if I run the commands from the Terminal, they work fine. I’m on OS X 10.4.9 by the way.
Replacing newline with ‘;’ works:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE; killall Finder
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.
Quicksilver has a “Run command in Shell” command, so you can also set up a trigger for that extra speed boost.
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.
“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.
This is an awesome tip. Thanks!
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?
i love apple and people who share skills! thanks for tip. very usefull
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
“defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE && killall Finder” … that stops the newline also.
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';
i am VERY angry at this
i can not make the hidden files disappear again
can someone please help me?
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’;
Works like a charm. Thank you.
I was tired of looking up the command everytime I needed to make visible hidden files.
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/.
Greate tutorial. ALso, the opportunity of interactive with your mac worths for the work
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!
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
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
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!
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 ;)
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?finger?
Very cool – thanks. I really should take a closer look at Automator.
Many thanks!! This saved me so much time.
Thanks again.
Sanjeev
Really helpful thanks!
Pretty cool!
thanks!
Once I changed the line breaks this worked like a charm. Thanks for the tutorial!
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
this is cool. but when i open automator there is no applications folder in the library. any help please?
nevermind i figured it out. thank you very much
I know a lot about PC computers, but MAC is something new… thanks for this information, I’m learning a lot…
Good work mate.It’s quite useful for some like me who just switched from crap Windows to MAC.
Thanks! works great in 10.5.7!
Thats one good hack..!!
Cheers M8!! Keep coming with other tips too…!!
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.
perfect!
Thanks!!
thanks a lot! you solved a lot of my problems in one go :)
Great post thanks.
Recently bought a macbook pro and have been struggling with this bad boy!
what does he mean when he says “simply edit the above workflow by substituting “FALSE” for “TRUE”
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
Brilliant. Worked great. Thanks.
works perfectly, so simple and took 30 seconds,
thanks so much! :)
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.
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.
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.
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?
Hi!!
I have the same problem!
Just upgraded to Snow Leopard and I don’t get the contextual menu listing Automator workflows!!
Did you manage to recover them?
Someone recommended me this third party app
KavaServices
I haven`t really tried it.
Please do let me know if you can use it again.
Hello Again!
I manage to get this working
check out this link
http://www.reynoldsftw.com/2009/08/automator-and-finder-interactions-in-os-x-10-6/
It turns out, you must right click a file or folder and then you’ll get the automator workflow!
Mark, I have the same problem.
Tivo, I have been working on this for over an hour and haven’t figured out how to get this to work through automator. It seems like you have it figured out. Could you explain EXACTLY what you did? I am extremely frustrated as it seems like this should be so simple and there’s no help on the net. I can’t even get any of those Terminal commands I’ve found around the net to work, so I really need this explained step-by-step! Thanks for any help.
Tivo, nevermind. I finally posted an e-mail to the Automator mailing list, and somebody responded with a post that helped me figure out how to do it.
1) Open Automator
2) Select “Service” and “Choose”
3) Where it says “Service receives selected…” pick “files or folders” from the drop-down menu, then “in…” pick “Finder” from the drop-down menu.
4) To the left, in the big list of actions, pick “Run Shell Script” and drag it and drop it into the empty pane to build the workflow.
5) In the box where you type, delete “cat” and cut-and-paste “defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder”
6) Go File>Save As… and name it whatever you want (like “Show Hidden Files”).
7) To get it to work, right-click on any folder and choose “Show Hidden Files” or whatever you named your workflow.
8) To hide hidden files, repeat steps 1-7, except in the code, change “TRUE” to “FALSE” and name your workflow differently (i.e. “Hide Hidden Files”)
Hopefully this helps some other people.
Thanks Melanie this worked perfect
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.
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
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.
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!
My parents used to torture me as a child. ,
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?
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
Good freeware application for http://code.google.com/p/hide-unhide
great fix!!! now i can see everything
Thank you so much!
Yes, nice fix, thanks. But it has the strange effect on my Mac (OSX 10.4.11) of making ALL (and I mean all) my file and folder icons kind of dimmed or faded? I can still see them ok, but they’re not bright shining icons like they were before!
It’s a bit like looking at the icons through a cataract! (I hope I’m not getting one…)
Elegant solution, perfect!
This didn’t work for me the first time, but it is because I copied and pasted directly from this page, not realizing that there is a line break, as someone else mentioned. I had my code all on one line, which is wrong. That is, the code should have TWO lines exactly as shown above, and here:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder
Then it worked perfectly – thanks!
I used time machine to move all of my preferences/files into 10.6.3 from 10.4.X and when I try to run the new script in Automator I get this message:
ACTION FAILED: defaults[258:60f] Unexpected argument killall; leaving defaults unchanged. (1)
Any idea what is going on?
I used time machine to move all of my preferences/files into 10.6.3 from 10.4.X and when I try to run the new script in Automator I get this message:
ACTION FAILED: defaults[258:60f] Unexpected argument killall; leaving defaults unchanged. (1)
Any idea what is going on?
p.s. I had the “show hidden files” automator running in 10.4 which it carried over into 10.6 and now I want to make it go away. That’s the problem I’m having.
Alex, I went from 10.4 to 10.6 also, and they changed Automator enough to where you can’t do things the same way as you used to. If you look at my post a little ways up this page from March 21, 2010, I explain the way I found out how to get this script to run in the new Automator. Just follow it step-by-step and it should work. Hope this helps.
Okay, sorry I didn’t notice your “P.S.” until now. I don’t know how to make that error stop, except maybe if you create the new script, it will cause the error to stop. Maybe just wishful thinking.
This widget for Mac works very well to show and hide htaccess files…
http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/developer/hiddenfiles.html
I was unable to get the shell script to work on snow Leopard Melanie and kept searching for a solution and found this widget! It’s fantastic!
Thanks Melanie and Jessica! I couldn’t get Automator to work for me either, but the widget is great!
Thanks again :)
You’re welcome. I wonder why you two weren’t able to get it to work. I simply typed the EXACT steps I used and it works just fine for me. Who knows. I’m glad you found something else that works at least. This was a big hassle for me when I was trying to figure it out.
The above procedure doesn’t work with Snow Leop-ard. There is no “Save As Plug-in” option available.
Nor is Applications listed in the Library.
It worked fine in Snow Leopard for me. Here’s what I did:
- started automator
- choose work flow as the template type
- clicked Utilities on the far left window
- dragged then dropped Run Shell Script into Workflow window
- delete the “cat” text and then paste in the:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder
- File –> Save As
– name it and choose Application as the type
- That’s it!
Hi…
i can’t find save as plugin… in automator menu…
what am I missing? is this only for older version of automator?
Thanks,
Robert
I was having trouble with Automator on my laptop and found this much MUCH simpler alternative using Terminal…
http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=lBCaPLrN5Mw
Thanks for this writeup! You should update it (or provide new instructions) for the changes to Automator right-click menu functionality in Snow Leopard.
I found the following comment to be useful, that describes the changes.
http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=8713076&postcount=3
The steps to get the Automator script right-click menu items back in Snow Leopard are:
1. Open Automater.
2. Choose the ‘Service’ template
3. Specify that the service receives input from ‘files or folders’ in application ‘Finder’
4. Find and Drag the ‘Run Shell Script’ action from the Actions sidebar.
5. Paste in the commands mentioned in the original instructions.
6. Save the script according to the original instructions.
7. Repeat these instructions for both ‘Show Hidden Files’ and ‘Hide Hidden Files’.
To see it in action just right click on any file or folder in finder, and there will be a new ‘Services’ menu > Hide Hidden Files, Show Hidden Files.
Note you can also make this option appear in the MAIN application Services menu (eg, Finder > Services > Hide Hidden Files). In step #3, choose ‘no input’ instead of ‘files or folders’.
When I open Automator, what template do i use???
cmd click not working… don’t know why i cannot get the pop up box? please help
This works great, but two things happened. The script showed the hidden files, but also show how much used/free space is on my local drives. I was able to run the script to now show the hidden files, but my local drives still know the used/free space. How do I get rid of that?
If you want to hide some files on your Mac from curious eyes, then there is a solution available. It is called UberMask. It allows to hide/show files with a single keystroke. Available for test here: http://www.novamedia.de/en/mac-ubermask.html
Ok, so I followed these steps, and now when I go into my Documents Folder..there’s nothing there. Have all my Documents been deleted??
I followed these steps. When I went into Finder > Documents…all my Documents are now missing. Are my documents deleted forever?
Someone (nikolar) had asked about this in the other comment section but for some reason I wasn’t able to reply to it. I retooled the two services into one that toggles between showing and hiding the hidden files:
VALUE=$(defaults read com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles).
if [ "$VALUE" = FALSE ]; then.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE.
else
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE.
fi
osascript -e ‘tell application “Finder” to quit’;.
osascript -e ‘tell application “Finder” to activate’;.