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spravtek

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 17, 2012
47
0
Is anyone else having issues with sometimes the command to show hidden files (and the killall for the Finder) doesn't work?

Sometimes I have to issue the command 3 times before I finally get to see the hidden files. And double clicking on hidden folders (once you can see them of course) isn't working either.
 
Last edited:

GGJstudios

macrumors Westmere
May 16, 2008
44,541
942
Are you certain you're using the right commands, including proper capitalization?

To show hidden files in Finder, enter the following two commands into a Terminal window (press enter after each line):
defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder​
To hide hidden files in Finder, enter the following two commands into a Terminal window (press enter after each line):
defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
killall Finder​
 

spravtek

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 17, 2012
47
0
Are you certain you're using the right commands, including proper capitalization?

To show hidden files in Finder, enter the following two commands into a Terminal window (press enter after each line):
defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder​
To hide hidden files in Finder, enter the following two commands into a Terminal window (press enter after each line):
defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
killall Finder​

Yep ... I'm 110% sure ... I even wrote the command out a few times making sure I didn't misspell or forgot a capital or whatever ... But still nothing ... I can't even get it to work now, tried 5 times ... nothing, very strange.

This is a clean install by the way ...
 

spravtek

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 17, 2012
47
0
Well ... That's solved ...

The command that works for me is exactly this

Code:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles true

Notice the small "f" in com.apple.finder

I copied my working .aliases file from my Lion installation (where it was working 100%) to my freshly installed Mountain Lion ... And it had that "f" in capital ...

So that got changed somehow apparently.
 

GGJstudios

macrumors Westmere
May 16, 2008
44,541
942
Well ... That's solved ...

The command that works for me is exactly this

Code:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles true

Notice the small "f" in com.apple.finder

I copied my working .aliases file from my Lion installation (where it was working 100%) to my freshly installed Mountain Lion ... And it had that "f" in capital ...

So that got changed somehow apparently.
Glad you got it worked out! I had those commands from when I was on Leopard and they worked perfectly. Now I look on SL and Finder is not capitalized. I knew capitalization is important, but I didn't know it had changed to lowercase. Thanks for the "heads up".
 

Nermal

Moderator
Staff member
Dec 7, 2002
20,595
3,936
New Zealand
Are you on a case-sensitive filesystem? "finder" is how it is in the filesystem but both work on my case-insensitive system.
 

spravtek

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 17, 2012
47
0
Glad you got it worked out! I had those commands from when I was on Leopard and they worked perfectly. Now I look on SL and Finder is not capitalized. I knew capitalization is important, but I didn't know it had changed to lowercase. Thanks for the "heads up".

No worries ... The odd thing is ... You still have to make the "f" capital if you issue killall Finder :) ... Why not make it all lower case ... who knows :rolleyes:

----------

Are you on a case-sensitive filesystem? "finder" is how it is in the filesystem but both work on my case-insensitive system.

You make an excellent case here ... Now I need to ask my co-worker if he made his disk case-sensitive (got his machine when he moved to another department) ... Probably not ... Didn't think of that... Thanks for the tip ;)
 

midorosan

macrumors newbie
Apr 30, 2007
14
0
Thanks

Many thanks for that it fixed my problem and I have filed it for future reference.
 

xpmrz

macrumors newbie
Oct 19, 2013
6
0
Thanks the OP and everyone so much. I had the problem too and couldnt find the solution until I found this thread.

Imo this is a retarded error. Why must Apple make everything so complicated ? Hah i had to spend my 1 hour just to fix a problem which solution is changing one letter to lower case .
 

Saturn1217

macrumors 65816
Apr 28, 2008
1,264
834
God I love the internet. Just ran into this issue and your thread was at the top of the google search. Easy solution. Thanks!
 
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