Front End Engineering, May 2015

Hidden files

By default, in Finder, any files that begin with a period (.) are hidden. For example, a file named .gitignore would not appear in Finder. There is a terminal command that allows you to show/hide these files in Finder. You might have to quit and relaunch Finder by holding alt and right-clicking on its app icon to make these take effect.

Show hidden files

$ defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES

Hide hidden files

$ defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles NO

Additional Resources

To create shortcuts for these commands, check out this article: http://ianlunn.co.uk/articles/quickly-showhide-hidden-files-mac-os-x-mavericks/