Mac OS X (10.7.2) Posted on Jan 17, 2012 10:33 PM. Chflags hidden /Library. To hide it again. The easy way to find the path would be to open another Finder. Access the Library the Easy Way (OS X Mavericks and later) If you use OS X Mavericks or later, you have the easiest way of all to permanently access the hidden Library folder. This method is recommended for anyone who wants permanent access and isn't worried about accidentally modifying or deleting a file from the Library folder.
'mount -t smbfs' is really just a pointer to 'mount_smbfs', and everything works just fine under 10.1.5 (actually, 10.0 through 10.1.5...), assuming you do things right (i.e. have your permissions set correctly and whatnot).mounting an smb share should be as easy as:
where 'servername' is the NetBIOS name of the server (an IP address may also be substituted), 'user' is a valid user on that server, and 'share' is the name of the share you wish to mount locally (you'll most likely have to create the /Volumes/share directory)
I'll also note that if you place your mount in the /Volumes directory, Finder.app will see it, and place an icon for it on the desktop (assuming your Finder preferences are set to place shared volumes on the desktop). If the share isn't appearing on your desktop, use the Go to folder... command in the Go menu in the Finder, and point it to /Volumes, the share will appear on the desktop as soon as you click on its icon in the Finder.
doing a manual mount like this will leave Finder.app unable to unmount the share, but if you feel the need to manually mount a share, you should of course be prepared to manually unmount it using:
If you are still having troubles unmounting the share, unmount as root:
none of this functionality requires anything remotely related to fink, as it is standard Darwin functionality
Added shortcut method available on macOS Sierra keyboard.
Method of showing/hiding hidden files tested and working on macOS Sierra.
Method of showing/hiding hidden files tested and working on Mac OS X El Capitan.
It seems like every day I search Google for the command to show hidden files on Mac OS X, not to mention Googling for the command to then hide those hidden files a few minutes later.
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.
Since the release of macOS Sierra, when in Finder, it is now possible to use the shortcut:
Press once to show hidden files and again to hide them. If you're using a version earlier than macOS Sierra, see Show/Hide Hidden Files using Terminal Aliases to setup a toggle command via terminal.
Thanks to Guido Schlabitz for making me aware of this new shortcut.
The long way to show hidden Mac OS X files is as follows:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES
This will show all hidden files. To hide them again, follow the same steps but replace the Terminal command with:
It's not the longest set of instructions or the biggest command to commit to memory but if you're doing this a lot, it's worth spending a few minutes now to save yourself a lot more time in the future.
A Terminal alias is a name or shortcut for one or multiple commands. Using an easy to remember alias, we can turn the above four step process into just one.
An alias can be made temporarily (just for the use of one terminal session) or permanently. As we want this to be a shortcut used now and in the future, let's make it permanent:
sudo nano ~/.bash_profile
alias showFiles='defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES; killall Finder /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app'
Below that, paste the following: alias hideFiles='defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles NO; killall Finder /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app'
source ~/.bash_profile
to refresh your profile and make the aliases availableNow when you want to show hidden files, all you need type in Terminal is showFiles
, then hideFiles
when you want to hide them.
If you want to modify the behaviour or alias names, let's take a closer look at the commands you just added:
alias
tells Terminal we're adding a new alias.
showFiles
is the name of the alias. Change this to what you wish.
We then give the alias two commands. The first being:
This is the command to show hidden files and is ended with a semi-colon ;
so we can then use the second command:
This will relaunch the Finder (to replicate the step of holding the 'Option/alt' key then right clicking the Finder icon in the dock).
With the aliases set up, all you need do in the future is type showFiles
and hideFiles
to show and hide Mac OS X's hidden files respectively.
Aliases can be used to speed up your interaction with the Terminal. Set up an alias for navigating to your most used directories, to commit to a GitHub repo and so on.
Ian Lunn is a Front-end Developer with 12 years commercial experience, author of CSS3 Foundations, and graduate of Internet Technology. He creates successful websites that are fast, easy to use, and built with best practices.