Comments on: Toggle display of hidden files in Finder with keyboard shortcut [Update 2]

By: Robert Davis

Robert Davis — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 22:46:53 +0000

Just wanted to say thanks for this article. The instructions are excellent and the final results are a life saver Thanks for putting the work in to make this so easy to follow.

By: Toggle Hidden Files in Finder! – Just some Thoughts

Toggle Hidden Files in Finder! – Just some Thoughts — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 16:33:29 +0000

[...] Link to Article August 23, 2010 – 11:33 am | By Michael Nix | Posted in General | Comments (0) ← The awesomeness that is MooTools! [...]

By: madgunde

madgunde — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 02:22:03 +0000

MrPete, easy is a relative term. Considering to accomplish this same task on previous versions of MacOS X or any other platform would require one to know a lot about programming, this is as easy as it gets by far when you consider the elegance and integration of the final product. This is pretty much as easy as it gets and I challenge you to prove me wrong on this.

Anyone with just a bit of understanding of terminal commands or AppleScript can create quite sophisticated custom workflow solutions using Automator. Services and Mac OS X’s customizable keyboard shortcuts extends that usability even further for a very high level of integration and polish not seen anywhere else.

Besides, I gave you simple step by step instructions. How hard is it to just follow them?

By: MrPete

MrPete — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 01:56:42 +0000

Interesting! Only one tiny quibble… “powerful and easy to use set of tools”…

I’d hardly call the above “easy.” This is way more obscure, and more of a hassle to implement, than any simple shell script!

This makes Linux look downright simple by comparison.

But at least it is *possible*

By: madgunde

madgunde — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 22:00:31 +0000

Delete the service and start over, you did something wrong. Make sure you select the entire applescript in step 6, copy and paste it into Automater as instructed (do not retype it) as the line breaks don’t show up properly due to the limited width of the blog. If you follow the instructions EXACTLY as they are written, then it will work fine.

By: Charlie

Charlie — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 18:56:40 +0000

Thanks for a great script. I am having the problem that when I run the script form the Finder Services menu (I don’t have a shortcut) a syntax error occurs. It says “syntax error: Expected “given”, “in”, “of”, expression “with”, “without”, other parameter name, etc. but found unknown token. (-2741)”. I have double checked everything and read all comments and find nothing different from what you instructed. Any idea ?

By: Rodolfo

Rodolfo — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 01:44:26 +0000

Useful! I haven’t seen the error that Dave says (os 10.6.3)
Thanks

By: madgunde

madgunde — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 14:51:58 +0000

This is a problem I haven’t been able to consistently avoid. The solution for now when this happens is to simply relaunch Finder by clicking it’s Dock icon.

By: dave

dave — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 01:04:22 +0000

only issue is that finder no longer shows up as an active application in the application switcher bar (cmd-tab). any ideas?

By: dave

dave — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 00:59:20 +0000

beautifully done. many thanks, good sir.

By: Magnum

Magnum — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 06:19:26 +0000

Works like a charm and thanks for the info.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 16:21:55 +0000

Nevermind I got it working. Apple doesn’t like me using ctrl in my keyboard shortcuts I suppose, because cmd works, although ctrl is so much more convenient

By: Jeff

Jeff — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 16:13:20 +0000

Now I see I can run it by going Finder > Services > Toggle hidden files. But still the keyboard function won’t work, which is really much more convenient.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 16:03:46 +0000

This is weird… it works when I run it through automator, but when I save it as a service and try the keyboard shortcut, it just selects a folder in finder. What could be the problem?

By: tomek

tomek — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 09:20:02 +0000

beautiful…thank you for the quick reply./.

By: madgunde

madgunde — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 09:00:25 +0000

Just remove the appropriate file from: ~/Library/Services/

That’s the Library folder in your user account’s home folder, not the one in the root of your hard drive.

By: tomek

tomek — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 08:52:17 +0000

great…thank you for this – pretty stupid and ignorant question i am assuming but how do i remove this script if i no longer want it?

By: Guide: Export your contacts to .CSV on Pre and Pixi - Page 2 - PreCentral Forums

Guide: Export your contacts to .CSV on Pre and Pixi - Page 2 - PreCentral Forums — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 20:34:24 +0000

[...] [...]

By: aankun

aankun — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 06:01:17 +0000

finally i can see all my file, thanks a lot ^_^

By: apoorva

apoorva — Mon, 17 May 2010 01:45:01 +0000

totally awesome shortcut, thanks for sharing!! hate apple playing parent.

By: madgunde

madgunde — Mon, 03 May 2010 03:55:01 +0000

@Fred

Your Finder probably is quitting but then not restarting. Simply click the Finder Dock icon to relaunch it. I haven’t been able to fix this inconsistency. It happens sometimes to me but not always. Not sure if it’s a bug or not. If anyone knows the solution, please post it in the comments.

By: Fred

Fred — Sun, 02 May 2010 08:16:45 +0000

Great script, looked around for something like this for a while. Though I have one question, why is it that Finder does not show up in the cmd+tab window when “ShowAllFiles -bool FALSE”, it shows up when the bool is set to TRUE.

By: madgunde

madgunde — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 22:50:37 +0000

Easier for whom? The point is to accomplish the task without using a 3rd party tool and to be able to toggle it quickly anytime you want with a simple keyboard shortcut.

I fail to see how launching an application is easier than a keyboard shortcut.

By: Frequency Design

Frequency Design — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 19:35:37 +0000

There is a much easier way to do this, use Graphic Converter’s batch copy function and turn on invisible files in the prefs for converting.

http://www.lemkesoft.com/

By: david g

david g — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 15:41:14 +0000

Fabulous – works brilliantly!

Thanks ever so much – been getting in a right pickle trying to find hidden files.

By: Titas

Titas — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 06:14:02 +0000

just want to kiss you for such great code….. ummmmaaa….keep it man…

By: Graeme Williamson

Graeme Williamson — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 22:02:17 +0000

Hi, great script works exactly as described, I was wondering if the same thing can be done for “Show Package Contents”. Because of the Finder restart any windows showing package contents are closed .Thanks

By: Toggle display of hidden files in Finder with Automator (OSX)

Toggle display of hidden files in Finder with Automator (OSX) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 15:49:16 +0000

[...] Head over to Art of Geek for the full article. [...]

By: madgunde

madgunde — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:33:33 +0000

Hi Erdee,

Command+O is the keyboard shortcut for opening items in Finder. If you’re new to Macs, I suggest you browse the menus because keyboard shortcuts are always shown next to their commands in the menus at the top of your screen.

By: Erdee

Erdee — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 09:17:03 +0000

How run or open selected object in FINDER with keyboard shortcuts? When I press Enter, it just do Renaming. Do I must double click with my magic? Excuse me, Mac is too new for me… Wish me luck!

By: madgunde

madgunde — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:00:34 +0000

Mitch,

This trick works in 10.6.2. If it’s not working for you then you’re likely doing something wrong. To show hidden files the manual way, open Terminal and type in the following all on one line:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool TRUE

After hitting return, simply restart the Finder. To reverse the change use the same command but with FALSE instead of TRUE at the end and restart the Finder again.

By: Mitch

Mitch — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 11:40:24 +0000

I Googled?Binged – SPECIFICALLY – for show hidden files in snow leopard 10.6.2 and got to this post!

(as with many posts before) … nothing works.

So MY question is, does anyone REALLY KNOW how to show hidden files in the 10.6.2 version … without directing me – AGAIN – to a solution for the 10.6 vrsion.

OBVIOUSLY there IS a difference (did Apple discover that already by themselves ??? )

wondering

By: Bob

Bob — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 07:49:44 +0000

On my brand new 27″ iMac Core i7, I have the same problem with Finder not opening again unless I sleep for 1.5 seconds at the end of the script. I am using /bin/bash so that’s not the issue. I think it’s a problem with timing. My guess is that people with slower cpus are not seeing the problem.

By: Eman

Eman — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 01:07:52 +0000

Added observation re: inconsistency in behavior:

It seems that whenever the finder windows reopen correctly, they also position properly to location of sidebar selection, if appropriate. When the windows don’t open up, then opening a window results in selection starting from the root directory “/”, with no sidebar selection.

By: Eman

Eman — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 23:58:58 +0000

Thank you for this gem of a tutorial. The service works fine, but the re-opening of the finder is intermittent. I can’t discern a pattern in the behavior, though. Even so, I find both the service and the tutorial invaluable!

By: Christopher

Christopher — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:28:45 +0000

Thanks for this, I was using terminal to manually find and remove unused files and ran into a problem doing it that way. Nicely written and easy to follow tips are my favourite ones!

By: Installing LAMP/MAMP on Snow Leopard/Mac Pro Part I « NIM ReFLEXtions

Installing LAMP/MAMP on Snow Leopard/Mac Pro Part I « NIM ReFLEXtions — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 16:42:11 +0000

[...] found this script to be of help so I could toggle display of hidden files in FInder: Toggle display of hidden files in Finder with keyboard shortcut I realize the use of /private/etc works in the finder but I always had the same setting in windows. [...]

By: madgunde

madgunde — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 20:20:44 +0000

Hmmm, something is definitely messed up in your install if that’s truly the case that there’s no “Utilities” category, but you might still have the Automator action “Run shell script”, just select the Library to view all actions and scroll down.

By: John

John — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 17:16:29 +0000

When I open Automator to enter the script, there is no “Utility” entry in Library.

I’m running 10.6.2.

By: DB-Elements

DB-Elements — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 22:03:25 +0000

Great tutorial. Thanks for the help!

By: Scott Goldman

Scott Goldman — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 19:01:05 +0000

Excellent – you nailed it. The problem was that the action wasn’t set for “/bin/bash” but rather for another selection. Changing that in the drop-down menu and then saving the workflow did it. (I had done the copy/paste you suggested in the first iteration… I never trust anything to be re-typed when it can be copied.)

Many thanks for a great Service item and for your very quick response. Much appreciated.

By: madgunde

madgunde — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 15:41:03 +0000

Scott,

Make sure you are copying and pasting the entire contents of the shell script from above into the Automator Run Shell Script action. Do NOT type it in manually as doing so could introduce typos. Also make sure in the action that /bin/bash is set as the Shell. Click on the screenshot below step 6 and compare it carefully to what you have in Automator just before you save the service. The Shell setting and the script itself are the only places I can think you could have gone wrong. Good luck!

By: Scott Goldman

Scott Goldman — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 14:16:23 +0000

I have followed your instructions precisely but have hit a roadblock.

Somehow the Service only gets me to the point where the Finder quits – nothing occurs after that and when I manually relaunch the Finder the invisible files have not been toggled on.

This is on Snow Leopard with all latest updates. Any thoughts on what might be preventing the shell script from fully executing?

Many thanks.

By: George Cook

George Cook — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 16:18:06 +0000

THANKS!

Just what I needed

By: Automator: Show hidden files in Finder « Entertainment and Technology Blog

Automator: Show hidden files in Finder « Entertainment and Technology Blog — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 07:36:44 +0000

[...] found this tip at artofgeek.com, tried it on my MacPro running Snow Leopard and it works like a [...]

By: Vincent

Vincent — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 21:08:16 +0000

Thanks a million!

By: macels

macels — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:14:16 +0000

AWESOME !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
YMMD

By: Charles Maurer

Charles Maurer — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:46:57 +0000

It doesn’t work at all using /bin/bash, either with or without the delay. Finder error: invalid connection.

By: madgunde

madgunde — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 01:05:36 +0000

Actually, you should be using /bin/bash as your shell, that’s probably why it isn’t working as instructed for you. /bin/bash is the default shell for Mac OS X, which is probably why I didn’t think to mention it, however if you look closely at my Automator screenshot, you’ll see that’s what’s set.

Try it with that and see if that allows the service to work without the 1.5 second delay.

By: Charles Maurer

Charles Maurer — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:54:59 +0000

Problem solved: Automator was set for a tcsh shell but needed to be set for an sh shell. But then another small problem showed itself: I needed to add a line sleeping the script for 1.5 seconds.

By: Charles Maurer

Charles Maurer — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:17:32 +0000

This script looks useful but I cannot get it to work. It does nothing but quit Finder. When I run the script from within Automator, it quits Finder then stops at the second line with this error:
SHOWHIDDEN=1: Command not found.

By: Ted

Ted — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 08:47:45 +0000

Thanks a lot for this great tips!

By: Dan

Dan — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 13:18:08 +0000

hmm ok that’s strange, a few minutes later and now it’s working just fine.. but I didn’t change anything guess may have something to do with the first time I tried this the active window was a mounted disk image, or maybe it just takes a while to kick in/not sure..

By: Dan

Dan — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 13:15:24 +0000

Hi – thanks for the guide, but didn’t work for me – the toggle works ok, but finder doesn’t start back up again afterwards – if I start it manually using the dock icon everything comes back as it was but with the setting toggled – any idea what I may’ve done wrong?
Cheers!

By: madgunde

madgunde — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 14:51:57 +0000

Thanks GlowingApple! That is an improvement and worked like a charm! I’ll update my post with the new shell script.

By: GlowingApple

GlowingApple — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 20:57:22 +0000

I haven’t tried this to see if it would work any better, but instead of killing the Finder process, you could use AppleScript to “gracefully” exit Finder and then reopen it:

osascript -e ‘tell app “Finder” to quit’ && osascript -e ‘tell app “Finder” to activate’
(in place of killall Finder)

If Finder is in the middle of some process it will send an error back via Applescript, so the service would just terminate with an error, rather than canceling the Finder operation.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 02:17:24 +0000

Very useful – certainly beats needing to install another app or for that matter opening the terminal.

By: Paul

Paul — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 16:16:23 +0000

awesome tip, thanks!

By: Jim

Jim — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 23:22:20 +0000

Hmm!

Redid everything and it all works properly now.
Thanx much.

By: madgunde

madgunde — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 22:14:11 +0000

You’ll find Services exactly where you’d expect Apple to put them:
‘~/Library/Services/’

The “~” in Unix speak means your home folder.

Just delete the service you don’t want from there. Be aware that renaming the service file will not rename it in the menu. You’ll need to open in Automator and re-save it as a new name to do that.

By: Marty

Marty — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 21:54:44 +0000

Thanks for this, is there a way to delete a service? I couldn’t figure out how to change the name on the first one i created (called it toggle hidden folders) so i created another one & just called it toggle. I realized that the point of making something hidden was not to make it obvious how to find it. Also, is there a way to make the service active & not show it in the menu?

By: madgunde

madgunde — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 16:52:32 +0000

Trashing com.apple.finder.plist and restarting Finder (or restarting your Mac) should have sufficed since that’s the only file the service modifies.

By: Jim

Jim — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 16:45:25 +0000

To restore my finder preferences so that I would not have to continual and always see all those invisible files (in every folder) I trashed the following files from my home/library/preferences folder: com.apple.finder.plist and com.apple.launchservices.plist. I then restarted and didn’t have the problem thereafter.

By: madgunde

madgunde — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 16:44:15 +0000

Running it again will hide them again. If not, then you did something wrong. To hide the files manually, just execute these two terminal commands, one after another (which is what the service does):

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool FALSE

killall Finder

By: Jim

Jim — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 16:36:57 +0000

How can I make all those files invisible again. Running the services action again does not make them invisible (only can make visible)?

By: madgunde

madgunde — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 14:25:35 +0000

Quite possibly, and if I find out, I’ll be sure to update this post! But keep in mind that the Open/Save dialog boxes are NOT handled by Finder, so just because the feature is there in the dialogs, does not necessarily mean it’s been implemented in Finder, or that it’s available to be called with a simple shell or AppleScript call.

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 11:16:32 +0000

If OS X can do it in Open/Save dialogs without restarting Finder, then obviously there is a different setting or procedure that Apple uses. It would be great if you could find out what that is.

By: David

David — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 22:46:44 +0000

Thanks for the great tip. This solves a lot of time wasting and frustration.

By: Richard

Richard — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 15:48:03 +0000

Thanks – this is great, I was using a download called “Invisibles” that was wonky as all get out and half the time the finder wouldn’t come back. This is clean and easy.

By: Kevin Morgan

Kevin Morgan — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 05:32:51 +0000

Outstanding work! Thanks!

By: Chris Kelley

Chris Kelley — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 02:22:07 +0000

Great tip! Thanks for sharing.

By: BlackMacX

BlackMacX — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 01:37:25 +0000

Great hint (from MacOSXHints) for the Open/Save Dialog file visibility toggle) and to you for working in a way to get it to work for the Finder!