Mac GeekeryGet your geek on. |
|
blog advertising is good for you
recent popular content
User login
|
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool true
et voila
About A.T.
|
how do I get into terminal?
will this allow me to delete files I don’t want found on my computer? If so, how do I know which files I need to remove?
I’m not very computer savvy, but need to cleanse my computer.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
“will this allow me to delete files I don’t want found on my computer? If so, how do I know which files I need to remove?
I’m not very computer savvy, but need to cleanse my computer.”
Well, a basic notion of unix systems would be a start. Else I would advise you not to touch the hidden files (especiallly those outside your of home folder).
In your case I would advise a backup of your applications and do a fresh install. If the files you want to get rid off are realy sensitive use a program that overwrites your disk several times before you format.
…gotta love the “defaults write” – wish that Apple would clue in and provide these obscure settings in a more straight-forward manner (ie. within the control panel). I suppose that they’re just trying to protect their reputation by protecting their non-technical userbase from breaking their installations. Of course, these are the same people who wouldn’t go diving for Terminal.app (&&fear the command line) so perhaps there is wisdom here…
Since sources like this are readily available/googleable my heartburn is minimal. Thanks for the tip – I had forgotten it! Long live tribal knowledge…
Does this work on Leopard? I just tried it and though I didn’t get an error at the standard output I still can’t see hidden files in finder.
Yes it works in Leopard. I just put the show and hide commands provided by AT in two shell scripts, you can find them here:
http://www.4shared.com/dir/6513499/afc2a365/Mac.html
You need to open them with Terminal.
The important part is the Force Quit and Relaunch Finder. The changes will not reflect without that.
http://gratiz.startze.nl
Thanks for the Leopard suggestion, works great.