Display hidden files hot key on Mavericks gone?

Question

On prior versions of OS X, it was possible to display hidden files in a Finder dialog box (Open, Save, etc.) using Command-Shift-Period.

In Mavericks, that feature isn't working for me. Is there another command that one can use? I would prefer not to globally enable hidden files.

EDIT: I'm the one offering the bounty. It seems I cannot comment because I don't have enough rep now :)

So... yes, I'm also running 10.9.1 and it does not work. I have used it in previous versions of OSX and it worked fine. The script mentioned is OK to show the hidden files in Finder, but it does not work that well when using the open/save dialog.

My use case: sometimes I need to open/save files to the /tmp directory. In previous versions of OSX I just used the dialog to get to the disk root, and then press CommandShift. and then I was able to see the /tmp directory (actually /private/tmp).

So, if you guys are using the same version of OSX and it does work for you, I guess there must be a way to re-activate this. Any ideas?

Answer 1

The key bindings doesn't work in Column view mode on Maverick, but it works in e.g. List view mode. Switching back to Column view mode after doing the toggle in List view mode then shows the hidden files.

Answer 2

I'm currently running OS X (10.9.1) and just tried the ⌘ + ⇧ + . keyboard shortcut in a save dialog box and it worked just fine.

I've also setup an AppleScript on my machine with a keyboard shortcut of ^ + ⌘ + ⇧ + . which toggles the visibility of hidden files within Finder whenever I want. This way I don't have to manually run a terminal command to show hidden files, and I can quickly turn it off to avoid accidentally modifying system files. I use FastScripts (also available in the Mac App Store) to allow me to set the keyboard shortcut for my AppleScript, and placed the AppleScript in my ~/Library/Scripts Folder.

Update

I've updated my script so that Finder does not need to be killed every time you wish to show/hide the display of hidden files. As markhunte pointed out, you can toggle the view state of the Finder window which will refresh the listing of contents. Thanks markhunte for pointing that out to me! Here's the updated script:

(*
    Author: Anil Natha
    Description: 
        This script toggles the visibility of hidden files in OS X. This includes
        showing hidden files in Finder windows and on the desktop.
    Last Updated: 2015-02-20
*)
tell application "System Events"
    
    try
        set hiddenFilesDisplayStatus to do shell script "defaults read com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles"
    on error
        set hiddenFilesDisplayStatus to "NO"
    end try
    set hiddenFilesNewDisplayStatus to "NO"
    
    if hiddenFilesDisplayStatus is "NO" then
        set hiddenFilesNewDisplayStatus to "YES"
    end if
    
    do shell script "defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles " & hiddenFilesNewDisplayStatus
    
end tell

tell application "Finder"
    
    set allWindows to windows
    
    repeat with currentWindow in allWindows
        set currentWindowView to get the current view of the currentWindow
        set alternateWindowView to list view
        if currentWindowView is list view then
            set alternateWindowView to icon view
        end if
        set the current view of the currentWindow to alternateWindowView
        set the current view of the currentWindow to currentWindowView
    end repeat
    
end tell

Older version of the script is listed below. Although it works, I don't recommend using it any longer now that the above script works more efficiently.

tell application "System Events"
    
    set hiddenFilesDisplayStatus to do shell script "defaults read com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles"
    set hiddenFilesNewDisplayStatus to "NO"
    
    if hiddenFilesDisplayStatus is "NO" then
        set hiddenFilesNewDisplayStatus to "YES"
    end if
    
    do shell script "defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles " & hiddenFilesNewDisplayStatus
    do shell script "killall Finder"
    
end tell

Answer 3

Never knew that that feature existed. But then, I've always used a different way, one that still works in 10.9:

The system extension Default Folder X. It's an old goodie, and still working well.

One of its Advanced options is to hold down Option when choosing Open/Save etc. to show all files, including the hidden ones.

Answer 4

It does still work, but it was buggy for me.

I had to change directories and then return to the first folder. Then it displayed hidden files.

It doesn't help to close/reopen the dialog. I'm not sure how widespread the bug is or what the trigger could be (this laptop is less than 48 hours out of the box).

Answer 5

The shortcut ⌘⇧. still works fine for me in Mavericks. It doesn't seem to have been changed since previous versions of OS X.

Some things you can try…

• Make sure that the folder you're looking at has hidden files/folders.

  • You can use ls in Terminal to see if there are hidden files/folders:

    cd /path/to/folder && ls -la
    

• Make sure you've not remapped the shortcut to something else.

  • Check System Preferences → Keyboard → Shortcuts for any mappings to ⌘⇧.
  • Check any 3^rd party apps for mappings to ⌘⇧.

Answer 6

As many others said, it still works perfectly fine. Maybe you changed a shortcut to this and that masks your intended task which is to show the hidden files.

Answer 7

This is not a solution to a hot-key but I will share what I use for this task. Funter app

Answer 8

You can turn it on by default doing this Terminal command:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -boolean true
killall Finder

...but this is less than convenient compared to a keyboard shortcut... but you could create an Automator workflow which runs a service which runs a Terminal command all assigned to a System Preferences Keyboard Shortcut... but still not as convenient.