Terminal Commands: Finding Hidden Folders in Mac OS X

In Mac OS X you can see folders that are hidden by default.

For example, in order to find your local machine’s SSH folder where keys are stored you will have to show all hidden files. These files and folders have a dot in front of them and are not visible by default.

In Finder, to toggle between seeing and hiding hidden files use the keyboard shortcut

Command + Shift + Period 

To make a folder hidden type:

chflags hidden

followed by the file path.  To get the file path you can drag the file from Finder into Terminal.

chflags hidden /Users/bobsmith/Documents/iOS

To make it public again, change the hidden to nohidden:

 chflags nohidden /Users/bobsmith/Documents/iOS

To hide ALL hidden files type this into the command line.

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles NO

To show ALL hidden files type this into the command line.

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES

To restart Finder so the changes take effect type this in after the above line:

killall Finder