Hiding and Show files on Mac OS X

setfile -a V foo.bar; setfile -a v foo.bar;
These commands will mark a file as hidden or visible to Mac OS X Finder. Notice the capitol V vs the lowercase v. This will also work for directories. setfile -a V foo.bar; // This marks the file invisible setfile -a v foo.bar; // This marks the file visible I have also found that adding the following aliases are helpful: alias hide='setfile -a V' alias show='setfile -a v'

1
By: JakeCarter
2009-08-12 17:16:03
macosx finder
6
Submit An Alternative

What Others Think

well, there is no "setfile" command on osx-leopard
vigo · 544 weeks and 6 days ago
hmmm. sorry my bad!
vigo · 544 weeks and 6 days ago
well, hides only "Finder"... still visible for cli
vigo · 544 weeks and 6 days ago
I have setfile, I think it came with developertools, but i'm not sure. great command, i've used it myself to hide /opt becouse instaling macports unhide it.
irae · 544 weeks and 6 days ago
Interesting (though i'm a little late to the party it seems). I found it, but as I have a case-sensitive filesystem, I have to type SetFile -a V foo.bar; Naturally I could alias or link the file to 'setfile'. Meh!
fukr · 430 weeks and 2 days ago
There is also the chflags command: chflags hidden /path/to/file/or/folder chflags nohidden /path/to/file/or/folder
plasticphyte · 332 weeks ago

What do you think?

Any thoughts on this command? Does it work on your machine? Can you do the same thing with only 14 characters?

You must be signed in to comment.

What's this?

commandlinefu.com is the place to record those command-line gems that you return to again and again. That way others can gain from your CLI wisdom and you from theirs too. All commands can be commented on, discussed and voted up or down.

Share Your Commands

Similar Commands

Search inside a folder of jar/zip files

execute your commands hiding secret bits from history records

rot13 simple substitution cipher via command line

Hiding ur evil intent! Shame on you!

Stay in the loop…

Follow the Tweets.

Every new command is wrapped in a tweet and posted to Twitter. Following the stream is a great way of staying abreast of the latest commands. For the more discerning, there are Twitter accounts for commands that get a minimum of 3 and 10 votes - that way only the great commands get tweeted.

» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu3
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu10

Subscribe to the feeds.

Use your favourite RSS aggregator to stay in touch with the latest commands. There are feeds mirroring the 3 Twitter streams as well as for virtually every other subset (users, tags, functions,…):

Subscribe to the feed for: