19

May

How to view invisible files on Mac.

Posted by ForestGump  Published in Joomla, Software, WordPress

After dealing with a lot of .htaccess files in connection with several websites. If you uncompress a .zip or transfer the file from a web server to your desktop via FTP, the file never shows up. Thus making very difficult to edit.

A file that starts with a period is one of the files that OS X hides by default so that you don’t accidentally delete and or alter it thus messing up your file system. However, there could be times that you want access to those hidden mac files. Strangely Apple has not made easy as toggling a menu item in the Finder.

Here is a simple and free solution for you to follow the following few steps. After writing a line or two of code you’ll be able to use Apple’s Automator software to create a plugin that you can use to toggle the view of hidden files from within Finder.

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
Now that your workflow is finished, choose File > Save As Plugin and choose Finder as the Application. Then save your plugin-in as ShowHiddenFiles or something else that sounds self explanitory.
Now, from the Finder or desktop, simply right-click and the contextual menu will appear. Choose Automator > ShowHiddenFiles and the Finder will restart showing all the hidden files.
Now you will want to create a way to go back to normal viewing. So simply edit the above work flow by chaning “FALSE” for “TRUE” and save the new plug-in as HideHiddenFile.
This Automater solution saves you from having to buy a fancy utility application to view your hidden files.