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
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What Others Think

well, there is no "setfile" command on osx-leopard
vigo · 648 weeks and 4 days ago
hmmm. sorry my bad!
vigo · 648 weeks and 4 days ago
well, hides only "Finder"... still visible for cli
vigo · 648 weeks and 4 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 · 648 weeks and 4 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 · 534 weeks and 1 day ago
There is also the chflags command: chflags hidden /path/to/file/or/folder chflags nohidden /path/to/file/or/folder
plasticphyte · 435 weeks and 6 days 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?

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