August 21, 2011

How to show hidden files in Mac OS X Mountain Lion

I’m continuing to get my new Macbook Air set up, and I’ve been getting adjusted to the new Finder. This helps if you’re a power user:
  1. Open the terminal (found in /Applications/Utilities/)
  2. Type the following (without quotation marks) to show hidden files: “defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool true”
  3. Hit enter
  4. Type the following (without quotation marks) to restart the Finder: “killall Finder”
  5. Hit enter

You can turn hidden files back off by doing the same thing, but switching the “true” to “false” in step 2.

And a random tip navigating in the finder: press ⌘ + ↑ (command + up arrow) to navigate to the parent folder, all the way up to root.

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