Unhide Hidden Folders | How To

To see them, Alex had to speak the terminal's language. He opened (found in Applications > Utilities). The blinking cursor awaited a command.

The hidden was now visible. Run the same command but change true to false : defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles false followed by killall Finder . Path Three: The Linux Command Line Alex’s home server ran Ubuntu Server—no graphical interface, just a terminal. Here, hiding files is also a matter of the leading dot. To see them, you don't change a setting; you change the command. how to unhide hidden folders

He typed:

And now, so is yours.

Alex suspected the culprit: a long-abandoned virtual machine image he’d created for a college project. He remembered deleting it, but what if he’d only deleted the shortcut? What if the 40GB virtual hard disk was still there, hiding in plain sight? To see them, Alex had to speak the terminal's language

The size column confirmed it: 450GB. He could now delete it with rm -rf .old_VMs or move it back into visibility by renaming it to remove the dot: mv .old_VMs Old_VMs . Back on Windows, Alex right-clicked the Old_VMs folder on The Vault, selected Properties , and at the bottom of the General tab, he un-checked the box labeled Hidden . He clicked OK. The folder icon instantly became solid and opaque—no longer a ghost. The hidden was now visible

He clicked the tab at the top of the File Explorer window—a ribbon of options that most people scroll past. In the Show/hide section, there was a simple checkbox: Hidden items .