There is a trick circulating for a long time on multiple cheat sites on the net that allows us to make Finder show us the hidden files. It consists of opening the terminal and typing the following command:
defaultswrite com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder
But be careful, do not do the «killall Finder» if you are copying files or executing some other task with Finder at that moment since it drops it without asking to be able to activate the changes.
If we want to have our directories or folders beautiful again we just have to type FALSE instead of TRUE at the end.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSEkillall FinderBut there is an old application that actually contains an Apple Script that does just this.
You can make a quick button on the Finder toolbar simply by dragging the application as indicated in the image above. (This trick also works for any other application). It does not have an interface or shows anything when we execute it, but just by opening it, it checks the Finder state (if it shows hidden or not) and changes the value on the contrary, that is, if TRUE changes it to FALSE and vice versa, then it kills the Finder task and starts it with the folder / s that we had previously open but this time showing us (or hiding again) the hidden files.
You should only be careful not to use it when you are copying or moving files from Finder since this does not ask and you could damage the copy or work.
This application is completely free and free and I downloaded it a few years ago from the official squart.de website but it seems that neither the site works anymore. Although it was created in 2006 for Panther and Tiger, it still works perfectly in the latest version of Leopard 10.5.2, in addition, in Leopard, hidden files are grayed out while non-hidden files continue to appear without graying. Before, in Tiger, they were all toned down. This little app was born hopefully… long live Blind!
You can download it compressed in zip directly from SoydeMac.
Thanks for showing how it works, I'll prove it and tell you how it worked for me
If by mistake I delete the files from the menu bar, how can I recover this function? Also, I cannot select anything on the desktop or empty the trash. My computer is unmac 10.4.11 g4. thanks to your answer
Works with snowleopard 10.6.8. on iMac intel from 2006
Thank you very much