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Show hidden files in finder in OS X

Every once-in-awhile I'll want to be able to view hidden files in the finder. You can google this problem and you'll find a lot of people with the same answer. Pop up your terminal and enter  "defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles True". The issue is that every time I need this I google it again because I just don't do it often enough to remember the syntax.  So I found it useful to create a bash function called showFiles that takes either True or False.

#expects $1 to be  either False or True
function showFiles(){
 
   defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles $1 && killall Finder
 
}

Now you can do 'showFiles False' or 'showFiles True'. I'll admit there are very few reasons to do this (show all files in finder) if you are proficient at the command line but sometimes I feel like being lazy and now you can be lazy too.

Tags: apple bash hidden files