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I set hidden files to be shown with the following commands:

defaults write com.apple.finder showHiddenFiles TRUE
killall Finder

This worked as expected. Then I tried to hide them again with the following commands:

defaults write com.apple.finder showHiddenFiles FALSE
killall Finder

This has worked in the past, but it doesn't seem to be working for me today. All hidden files are still visible in Finder windows. I tried a reboot and a disk permissions repair to no avail. I'm not sure what else to try. Anyone got any bright ideas?

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  • 1
    'true' & 'false' are predefined. TRUE, FALSE, XYZ all evaluate to an expression that is 'true'. So TRUE is true, and false is false, but FALSE is true.
    – ppostma1
    Nov 30, 2015 at 18:31

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
8

Try:

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles false

or with a lowercase f in finder, depending on the version of Mac OS X. And then:

killall Finder
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  • haha no way! That worked, thanks. Can't believe it was that simple! I need to wait 5 minutes to accept.
    – conorgriffin
    Dec 1, 2011 at 20:44
  • For what it's worth. I just changed ShowHiddenFiles to AppleShowAllFiles and that did it.
    – conorgriffin
    Dec 1, 2011 at 20:48

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