Hidden Files on Your Mac

As the Mac OS has its heritage in BSD, many of the features work the same way.  For example, if you name a file starting with a ".", it behaves as if it is hidden.  When we use Finder, by default it does not show any of these files.  Unless you are really geeky, you have no real reason to want to see all these files.

Let's take a closer look:

1)  Here is a snapshot of a directory

2)  Open a Terminal session and enter the commands below

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles true
killall Finder

3)  Finder will close and re-opens.  The directory now looks like this

4)  You can see both hidden directories and files.

5)  To restore back, enter the commands below in a Terminal session

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles false

killall Finder

6)  That's it!  Now all you need to do if figure out how to use this to your advantage.