Show/Hide Hidden Files on macOS

Today I decided to make a short and easy to remember alias to speed up the process. All I need do now is type showFiles and hideFiles whenever I need to show/hide OS X’s hidden files. Here’s how you can do it too.

  1. Open Terminal found in Finder > Applications > Utilities
  2. In Terminal, paste the following: defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES
  3. Press return
  4. Hold the ‘Option/alt’ key, then right click on the Finder icon in the dock and click Relaunch.
Relaunch Finder by right clicking the Finder Icon whilst holding the `option/alt` key

Relaunch Finder by right clicking the Finder Icon whilst holding the ‘Option/alt’ key

This will show all hidden files. To hide them again, follow the same steps but replace the Terminal command with:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles NO