Hiding Hidden Files again

Hi: Sorry if asked before. In every folder I open in finder, I see all the hidden files, either for a drive or for an individual folder. In individual data folders, there is always a .DS_Store for example.
Somehow I must have triggered something to display all the hidden files and I would love to figure out how to hide them again, but haven't been able to.
No option in preferences or in Get info on folders, so please help.
THx in advance.

I found the answer, its in this forum about page 6 or so by someone who wanted to see hidden files.
The answer for me, was to install Tinkertools and run that and uncheck the view hidden files. Dont know how that got set, but happy that I can't see them again.
Thx

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How can I hide hidden files again?

Hi I just bought a new macbook pro with maverick 10.9.3 I believe and made my hidden files viewable to extract certain data. But now I want to hide the files again how do I go about doing that?
thanks!

You could try it in Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
Then:
killall Finder

Showing/Hiding Hidden Files

Hey I was trying to fix a problem with my Macbook and turned on hidden files by typing a command in Terminal. Now I want to switch off showing hidden files. How do I do it?

Hey Reverie,
There is a much better alternative, instead of opening terminal back and forth for showing and hiding files, why not create a keyboard shortcut for it? Yes, it's possible. and the good thing is that every time you do it, it updates the Finder window automatically unlike the Terminal procedure you need to open or update the current Finder window.
Use Automator to add the shell script and manually add a new keyboard shortcut hot keys in System Preferences...
I have a blog tutorial for a more detailed instruction
Ernesto

How to toggle hidden files

With the new Mountain Lion, my previous keyboard short cut to toggle "show hidden files" doesn't work anymore. There was also a widget that you could download to do the same thing, but stored on mobileme, which is shut down.
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Open the Script Editor or AppleScript Editor in one of the subfolders of Applications and run the following:
tell application "Finder" to quit
if (do shell script "defaults read com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles") is "1" then
do shell script "defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles 0"
else
do shell script "defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles 1"
end if
delay 2
tell application "Finder" to run
If you change your mind later, run the script again.
(68271)

The hidden files on my macbook air keep showing up!

The hidden files on my macbook air keep showing up! I use different methodes to hide them, but every time, out of the blue, all those horrible 'windows like' .docs show up. I used Paralles 5 (have deleted it - no change), even updated to Lion, no change.. Deleted MacFuse.. no change... I suspected ThinkerTool, but also that one is gone... Files most of the time show as soon as I open a desktop folder... HELP anyone??

Dear People,
After month I'm still struggeling. Like I said, it is not just a replace True with False sollution. When I hide the 'hidden files' and I copy a file to my desktop, the screen flashes and boom... there are my hidden files again.
I can keep on hiding them, but they will keep showing up.... what to do?

Show hidden files breaks "All My Files"

I'm trying to get my AMP stack back up on a new Mountain Lion Mac, which has become a larger pain since they removed Web Sharing. First step to getting the AMP stack up was to show hidden files:
defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES
Then a restart of finder (option + right click Finder in dock > Restart), but this has completely killed "All My Files" showing anything. It's not like I really care about this feature of Finder, but still, just wondering if there is a different terminal command now for showing hidden files that doesn't break this. Hiding hidden files back to default does not fix "All My Files" either.
In addition, you can't double click any hidden folders, you have to right click and select "Open" or "Open Original" if it was an alias (ie etc).

I can't reproduce the problem.
If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the page that opens.
Step 1
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left.
Enter "mdworker" (without the quotes) in the Filter text field. Post the messages that appear in the Console window — the text, please, not a screenshot.
If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Do not post many repetitions of the same message.
Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included — edit that out, too, but don’t remove the context.
Step 2
Do the same with the search string "mds".

Make hidden files invisible again

Recently I had remote support (Teamviewer) from a software company, and as a result all the previously hidden files are visible (grey), and are cluttering up my file folders. I no longer wish to deal with that company. Can someone tell me the Terminal command line that makes those hidden files invisible again?
Thanks,
Klaus

Open the Terminal and type the following:
defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles 0
After doing this, log out and then log back in, or otherwise quit and relaunch the Finder.

"Colorizing" Hidden Files

I know all about showing (and then re-hiding, if need be) hidden files. What I need to know is whether it would be possible to "colorise" them, instead of just having Finder showing them as "greyed out".
For instance, if I could only explain to Finder that I want hidden files displayed in red (rather than just greyed out), I could spare myself quite a lot of eye strain when trying to tell hidden files apart from visible ones (since the "greying-out" business doesn't exactly make hidden files stand out ...).
Thanks in advance for any replies,
Luca

From the terminal, enter the following:
sudo chflags nohidden ~/path/to/file
This will change the properties of file from hidden to visible, rather than simply having finder reveal a hidden file. It will no longer be greyed out. You can then
To make the file hidden again,
sudo chflags hidden ~/path/to/file

Hidden files suddenly appear

HI
I have just upgraded to 10.10.3 and suddenly I see .Dear Sally_store files and many other hidden files.
Is there a way of hiding these again?
Philip

Open the Terminal from the Utilities folder. At the prompt enter:
chflags -Rf hidden
Leave a space after "hidden" then select and drag into the Terminal window the file or files you want changed, then press RETURN.

I have a 2nd gen Mac book air with Lion. The hard disk has filled up even though i keep my data , music etc on hard drive . I used disk inspector to find where problem was and it is 20GB in the hidden files under the user directory can i resolve this ?

I have a 2nd Gen MAc book Air with Lion . The 60GB hard disc has quickly filled up despite me keeping most of my data on a portable hard drive . I used disk inspector to locate the problem but found that it was was in 20 GB of hidden files in my user directory . Is this correct and is there anything i can do about it ? Using disk inspector you can not see individual hudden diretories or files. I did unhide them but there is a mass of diretories etc and so no way i could see if this is one or multiple files using the space. Library System and Applications are at 4 3 and 3 GB respectvely. The data I actually keep on there is 9GB Thanks for any help

I think the problem is Quick Time Player. I am using OS 10.6.8 by the way.
I tried it out again.
I had about 26 GB of space before I played an .avi video.
After the movie started to play (it was slow to load), I got a warning message that my startup disk was full. I opened Disk Utility and it told me I had no space left (about 20 MB or something like that was left).
I watched to the end of the movie.
Then I quit Quicktime Player.
And I shut down the computer.
I turned on the computer and checked Disk Utility. I have about 26 GB of space.
I think for some reason Quicktime Player uses up a lot of the disk space when it runs movies that are problematic. This movie I was watching did not open with vlc.
I normally use vlc to watch movies.
Probably it doesn't use up this much space when the movie is OK.
I think there's a problem with this particular movie. It is about 50 MB so it's not that big a file. I watch .smi subtitles with it. The Quicktime Player automatically loads the subtitle file in this case because the subtitle file has the same name as the movie file.
I watched about 10 movie files from the same series that I downloaded together and did not have any problem watching them. I watched them on vlc. But this latest movie had problems I think (as I repeat). It did not load on vlc even though I waited for a minute, and normally movies load instantly on vlc.
So I think that movie file caused problems. It made QT player use up a lot of hard disk space.
I had better avoid watching that movie in the future. I don't want it to wreck my hard drive.
So to sum up, everything is back to normal. I have the hard disk space that I should have. However, I am scared of damaging my hard drive due to shonky movie files that eat up all the space when they are played using QT player, and so I will not watch those files in the future, as I do not know why the files do that.

Error While Uploading, hidden file somewhere conflicting?

I was in the process of uploading some files to Acrobat.com, most worked but a couple of them failed. The progress bar in the upper right disappeared, but my files weren't showing. Figured there was just a problem with the file, so I tried to upload again, one at a time. It uploaded and then said a file exists with that name already and do I want to delete new, delete previous or rename the new one. I say to delete the one that was previously uploaded, and my file now appears with a " (1)" added to the file name. When I try to rename it to the correct name the error it gives is: "Could not complete your request (400) - An error occurred while trying to complete your request, and it could not be completed."
Is there a way to see hidden files or files that errored so I can clear them out to start fresh?

I was thinking the same thing, hoping there was some hidden way to get at the files.
I tried going through incognito mode and through a separate browser that had never been to any Adobe site, same error when I tried to rename.
I think I'll try to move the files I know are good to another folder then delete the folder where these annoying files are hidden. I would think that would get rid of them then I can start over. I'll let you know.

Hidden files on my desktop

Hi there - I've just purchased OSX 5.6 (which is the highest OS I can get for a pre Intel machine I believe) but before it comes I was just doing a general tidy up. When linking my computer to an old G4 PowerBook (using OS9 don't ask why), once mounted I noticed some folders on the desktop of my G5 that do not show up normally. (I can only view them after mounting the G5 PPC onto the G4 PowerBook and looking on there). The folder names are all proceeded by a "." +which I think indicates a hidden file+. I know that there normally are very important files that are purposely hidden and are vital to the OS (e.g. ".DS_Store" etc.) but these particular folders do not seem to be in that category after investigation.
I have a US client and I download lots of very large files via their FTP server using Fetch. When viewing the contents of the strangely named "hidden" folders that I can only see on the G5 once connected to the G4PB I then see very familiar names and enclosed folders from my US client containing around 40Mb of info each that cannot be accessed directly from my G5.
*My questions are:*
What are these files and why are they there - are they aborted efforts of previous FTP downloads?
Are they partial downloads waiting for more info - and if I delete them will it mess everything up?
Can I delete them directly from the G4 PowerBook, the only place I can I can see them?
If not can I purchase some software that will allow be to view hidden files on my G5PPC and evaluate and get rid of them?
Any help would be very much appreciated. Regards - Deano
+PS: If it helps the hidden folders are named:+
.BAHmpVUM
.BAHrDXsQ
.BAHvWION

Thanks again Limnos -
The Fetch people have been back to me already - not bad huh? - and had the following to say:
"+Hi Deane,+
+I'm not sure where those folders are coming from, but I can tell you that they aren't created by Fetch - nothing Fetch does would create such folders. So no, we don't think they are partially downloaded files.+
+I would be a little careful before deleting them. They could just be an artifact of how the Mac OS X file system looks to Mac OS 9; it could be that they are not real copies of files, but just pointers (aliases) to other files on your disk, so deleting the folders and their contents might unexpectedly delete files you really want to keep on your Mac. I would make sure that is not the case before deleting a lot of them; you might want to delete one file you're sure you don't care about first.+
+And you might want to look at them on your G5 directly. You can display hidden files on your G5 by doing the following:+
+* Open the Applications folder.+
+* Open the Utilities folder.+
+* Open the Terminal application.+
+* At the prompt, type:+
+defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES+
+* And then press the Return key.+
+* Then go to the Apple menu and Log Out, or Restart your Mac, for the changes to take effect.+
+Unfortunately showing the hidden folders has a variety of other side effects (such as making all your icons look washed out), so you'll probably only want to do this so you can investigate, and then turn it off again.+
+You can turn it off by following the exact same steps as above, except type NO instead of YES after "AppleShowAllFiles".+
+I hope this helps.+
Thanks,"
Pretty much backs up what you wrote in your first post but I think I'll try the route you suggest in your second and tuck them away somewhere for a week or so to see what happens. If all goes well I'll be back to credit your answer with a solved.
Cheers for the help - Deano

Folder Options - View Hidden Files and Folders

Hello,
On this same laptop, there seems to be an issue with *Folder Options - View Hidden Files and Folders.*
Each time i "check" that option to View - then i go back to verify/confirm the changes done - but the checkbox is "unchecked" again. Despite clicking on Apply and Ok to save the changes! The changes are never saved..
I have used other laptops for this same option and it all worked fine.
Please advise whether i need to apply or amend other settings for this to work?
Regards.

Hi
> Therefore, i doubt the antivirus program is the causal factor here..
I wouldnt say so.
I mean normally Bitdefender shouldnt cause such a problem thats right but theoretically its possible. Such security software programs are really good and necessary on every computer with internet connection but due the high security it could maybe blocks some changes from Windows.
In my opinion its worth a try to test it without Bitdefender. Alternative you can use AntiVir (freeware) and the Windows firewall. In my opinion a really good freeware solution.

Trashed files on a Toshiba stick , found by turning on show hidden files.

I rescued a bunch of files from a memory stick by the above method. I dropped these into a new folder on the laptop.
When I went into the folder , all were available. But After turning off "show all hidden files," I lost some , but not all , files. They are retrievable by using the switch again of course.
I was wondering if there is some code that might be modified in these files to make them all be "not hidden."
Thanks.
8 gig TOSHIBA STICK. SNOW LEOPARD ON MBP.

If you are not comfortable with the command line...
once you have turned on "show hidden files," note the names of the now unhidden files.
Each one should start with "."
remove the "." and the files will be visible when you turn off the show hidden files flag

How to display hidden files in Finder?

In Carbon Copy Cloner, I can see that there are hidden files on my internal hard disk. They have names like .apsidal, .Younity, etc. What settings do I use in Finder to display these files? I thought that using the System files are included setting would work, but it doesn't. Thanks

Choose Utilities from the Finder’s Go menu, open the AppleScript Editor, and run the following:
tell application "Finder" to quit
try
if (do shell script "defaults read com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles") is not "1" then error
do shell script "defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles 0"
on error
do shell script "defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles 1"
end try
delay 2
tell application "Finder" to run
If you change your mind later, run the script again.
(122189)

Hiding Hidden Files again

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