Our macOS operating system is made up of a large number of files and not all of these can be seen with the naked eye, the reason is simple and is that if it is always in view, most users would be lost. Something that would spoil the general aesthetics of the system and would cause us to touch something we do not want without realizing it or by accident. This happens in practically all operating systems, even smartphone ones.
Apple has taken precautions for this and it is not as easy to display these files as it can be in other operating systems. There are many hidden files, that although they cannot be seen with the naked eye, they are there. It is not that these files are not important, on the contrary, they are so important that they are kept hidden so that we cannot touch them if it is not consciously. In this article we are going to discover how to show hidden files on Mac in a simple way.
How to view hidden files on Mac
To do this we are going to use the "Terminal" application that is installed on all computers with macOS. For this we will go to our «Finder» and in the «Applications» section we will look for a folder called «Utilities», where we will find the «Terminal» application. Once this is done, we will follow the following steps to discover those files that are kept hidden on our Mac.
- We open the application "Terminal", either as we have explained above or using the spotlight finder, by clicking on the magnifying glass at the top right of our toolbar or using the key command (Command + Space).
- Once in we are in "Terminal", we introduce the following text: defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool YES and we press the enter key.
- Now we write KillAll Finder in the same Terminal and press the enter key to restart the Finder.
Now we are going to check that icons and folders that we did not see before appear in some folders, those are the files that were kept hidden on our Mac. We will differentiate them from the rest because they have a softer shading than the rest. This is so, because although we have exposed them, they are still delicate files on which the correct functioning of our equipment depends. We recommend caution when handling these files as you may not know their relevance.
How to hide the files we have discovered again
If we have already finished what we had to do or you have just discovered the hidden files out of curiosity, we can go back and hide all those files again. The process is almost traced to the one we had already done to discover them:
- We open the application again "Terminal".
- Once opened we introduce the following text: defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool NO then retype the command Killall Finder and we press the enter key.
In this way we will find that all those files with the shading have disappeared (they have gone back into hiding). So we will have everything as we had it before discovering them.
Why shouldn't we manipulate the hidden files?
As we have already commented previously, these hidden files are normally files that support the proper functioning of the system, files that are necessary but should not be deleted or moved from their corresponding places. As in other systems such as Windows or Android, these files are not useful when it comes to daily use of our equipment.
Some refer to commands programmed to perform various functions. The cache of some documents when they are being edited and some that simply run in the background for the system to work.
It is clear that if what you want is to mess with the system because you know what you are doing, you will not have a problem, although it would be advisable to do it preserving our main hard drive, using an external hard drive with the version of MacOS that we need. From the official Apple website we can download the version we want and the process to install it is very simple, so if we touch something that we should not, it will be a matter of minutes to restore the system.
Risks and consequences
We should not touch anything, if we do not have knowledge of what we are touching, first why deletion could lead to serious software problems, problems that can lead to a permanent crash of the computer, causing us to lose everything we have on our hard drive.
The problem with having these files exposed is that due to carelessness or ignorance, we can delete or move to organize some of these files, but these files are put there because they are necessary. For the same reason Apple hides them from the user, so that our folders appear cleaner and more intuitive at the time of daily use.
However, if you want to discover what our operating system hides from us, by following the steps that we have indicated, you can do it without problem, although We recommend taking the aforementioned precautions to avoid surprises.
