There are a number of reasons why you might want to trick a web server into thinking you're on a different operating system (OS) or web browser. One might be that you want to test the mobile version of your website from your computer. Or perhaps for some reason a website is restricted to a certain OS or browser and you wish to circumnavigate that barrier. Click Library in the drop-down list, and you can see the hidden contents of /Library. Aside from using the three methods above to show hidden files on Mac Mojave/Catalina/High Sierra, you can also use a Mac data recovery software to recover and see hidden files on Mac. Doing this exposes your MAC address and in turn can be used to identify your computer and the user. You can change your MAC address by Technitium MAC Address Changer. You should keep in mind that changing your MAC address is by no means enough to make you completely anonymous. Check out the tools section for tips on how to do this. Mac tips and tricks: 10 things you didn't know you could make your laptop do. Make life easier with these Mac shortcuts and hidden features. On your Mac, open the App Store. If you're not already signed in, click Sign In at the bottom of the sidebar, then enter your Apple ID and password. Click your name at the bottom of the sidebar. Your purchased apps appear. Hold your pointer over the app and look for the more options button. Click the more options button, then choose Hide.
Summary :
If you want to see hidden files and folders on Mac computer, you can check the 3 ways below to easily show hidden files and folders on macOS incl. Mojave/Catalina/High Sierra. To recover deleted/lost/hidden files on Mac or other storage devices, you can try the professional Mac data recovery software from MiniTool software.
Like Windows operating system (related: show hidden files on Windows 10), macOS also hides some files and folders from users to avoid some important files from be mistakenly deleted or damaged. If you need to show these hidden files and folders on Mac, you have several ways to do this. You can check the detailed guide below. Also, if you need to recover deleted/lost/hidden files on Mac, this post also attaches an easy guide.
Tip:Stellar Data Recovery for Mac - Professional Mac data recovery software allows you to easily recover deleted/lost files, photos, videos, audio, email, etc. from Mac computer, external drives like HDD, SSD, USB, SD card. Crashed Mac is also suppoted. It also includes a video repair and photo repair feature. (Choose preferred edition)
Way 1. Show Hidden Files Mac with Keyboard Shortcut
You can use keyboard shortcut to easily show hidden files and hide them on Mac. In Finder, you can press Command + Shift + . to show hidden files. If you want to hide those files again, you can press this shortcut again. This method applies to macOS Sierra or higher.
How to format SD card on Mac without losing data? This tutorial provides 2 ways with step-by-step guide to format micro SD card on your Mac and keep your data.
Way 2. Unhide Files on Mac with Terminal
You can also use Terminal commands to show hidden files in Mac operating system. Macos touch bar apps.
- You can open Terminal from Launchpad or open it from Finder -> Applications -> Utilities.
- Type the following command in Terminal window, and hit Return key: defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES.
- To hide the files again, you can type defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles NO.
Way 3. Check Hidden Files on Mac with Finder
- You can open Finder, hold on Alt (Option) key and click Go icon at the toolbar.
- Click Library in the drop-down list, and you can see the hidden contents of ~/Library.
Aside from using the three methods above to show hidden files on Mac Mojave/Catalina/High Sierra, you can also use a Mac data recovery software to recover and see hidden files on Mac.
Learn how to show hidden files/folders in USB or SD card, and how to recover hidden files USB, pen drive, memory card with best USB/SD card recovery software.
How to Recover Deleted/Lost Files and Recover Hidden Files on Mac
Stellar Data Recovery for Mac, a top data recovery program for macOS 10.7 and higher, enables you to easily recover lost, deleted or hidden files from Mac hard drive and external drives in 3 simple steps.
You can use Stellar Mac Data Recovery to recover any kind of file on Mac computer, external hard drive, USB flash drive, SD card, memory card, SSD, and more. It even supports restoring data from a crashed Mac and recovering data from a corrupted or formatted hard drive.
Another big merit of this Mac data recovery program is that it also includes a video repair and photo repair function. You can also use it to repair corrupt files after recovery.
Go to MiniTool download center to download and install the 100% clean Stellar Data Recovery for Mac, and use it to recover deleted/lost/hidden files on your Mac computer.
Step 1. You can launch Stellar Data Recovery for Mac to enter into its main interface. Then you can select what types of files you want to scan and recover, and click Next.
You can choose Recover Everything, or customize the scan to choose Documents, Videos, Photos, Audio or Emails based on your own need.
Step 2. Next you can choose the hard drive or location where you want to scan for lost/deleted/hidden files, and click Scan button. This smart data recovery software for Mac will start scanning all the data on the selected drive.
Step 3. Wait until the scan process finishes. You can see all detected files incl. deleted/lost/hidden files are displayed in the scan result window. You can browse the scan result to find your needed files and click Recover button. Select a destination and click Save button to store the recovered files to a new location.
Conclusion
This post introduces three ways to help you show hidden files on Mac Mojave/Catalina/High Sierra. You can also use the professional data recovery software for Mac to recover hidden files on Mac as well as retrieve deleted/lost files on Mac or other storage devices with ease.
Your Mac has a secret. Thousands of them in fact, in the form of hidden files and folders lurking on its hard drive or SSD. Don’t worry, though. These files and folders are all supposed to be there. In fact, many of them are essential.
Many of these files are in your Mac’s main Library folder or in the ~/Library folder, which is in your User folder. Both these Library folders are hidden, but inside them are folders and files that hold things like preferences for apps.
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In this article, we’ll tell you how you can view hidden files on your Mac and make your Library folder visible.
What are the hidden files on Mac?
The hidden files are a throwback to macOS’ Unix roots. In fact, the convention of naming them starting with a “.” comes from Unix. For that reason, you can’t use a “.” at the start of a regular file name, otherwise OS X will hide it.
The files themselves contain data like access rights and privileges for files and folders, application support files, and preferences.
There are a number of reasons files and folders are hidden. Mostly, though, it’s because they contain data critical to the smooth running of your Mac and that you shouldn’t interfere with. In addition, there’s no real reason for most users to see or access them. Also, if they were all visible, your Mac would look horribly cluttered.
How to view hidden files on Mac
Before you make your Mac show hidden files, it’s important to remember they’ve been hidden for a reason. The data they contain could cause havoc if you delete or alter it and don’t know what you’re doing.
If your goal in viewing, for example ~/Library is so you can manually delete application support files for a program you’ve uninstalled, consider using a dedicated uninstaller like CleanMyMac X. That will make it easy to remove all the files associated with an application with one click. You can download CleanMyMac X for free here.
CleanMyMac X will also allow you to get rid of all the hidden files you no longer need. Many of these files are created and used then not needed anymore. They just sit there clogging up your hard drive. CleanMyMac X scans your Mac, identifies this system junk and allows you to quickly and easily get rid of it, potentially several gigabytes of disk space.
If you still want to view hidden files on your Mac, you need to go to the Finder and do the following:
- Open a new Finder window and click on the name of your Mac under ‘Devices’ in the sidebar.
- Click on Macintosh HD, or whatever you’ve called your startup drive if you’ve renamed it.
- Press Command-Shift-. (period). You should now see lots of files and folders who’s name starts with “.” become visible.
- To re-hide the files and folders, hold down Command-Shift-. again.
How to view your Mac’s ~/Library folder
There are a couple of methods for making your ~/Library folder visible. Here’s the simplest:
- Click on the Finder in the Dock.
- Open a new Finder window and navigate to your user folder (Tip: if it’s not in the sidebar, go to the Finder menu, choose Preferences, click Sidebar and check the box next to your Home folder)
- Click on the Go menu.
- Hold down the Option (Alt) key.
- You should see that in the dropdown menu, Library appears below Home. Click on it.
Alternatively, do this to view your Library folder:
- Click on the Finder in the Dock.
- Click on the Go menu and choose Go to Folder.
- In the window that opens, type “~/Library”
With both these methods, your Library folder will disappear again when you close the Finder window. It’s easy enough to run through the steps above again to make it visible again when you need to, but if you want it permanently accessible, there are a couple of ways to do it.
The quickest is to drag the Library folder to the Finder’s sidebar. That will create a shortcut to it that will persist. If you want to keep ~/Library visible but don’t want it clogging up the sidebar in Finder windows, do this:
- Click on the Finder in the Dock.
- Click on the View menu and choose Show View Options.
- Check the box labelled Show Library Folder at the bottom of the window.
How to make macOS show hidden files using Terminal
If you’re feeling particularly adventurous, you can use the Terminal command line interface to view hidden files and folders. Here’s how to do it:
- Open Terminal from the Utilities folder in Applications, or by searching for it using Spotlight. You can also use the Go menu in the Finder to go directly to the Utilities folder.
- Type, or copy and paste, this command: defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles true
- Press Return
- Type: killall Finder
To hide the files again, repeat the above steps, but replace ‘true’ with ‘false’ at the end of step 2.
How to hide any file or folder using Terminal
Now that you know how to view hidden files and folders on your Mac, you may be wondering how you can hide other files or folders, to keep them away from prying eyes. There are a number of third-party applications and utilities that offer to do this for you, but you can do it yourself in Terminal, like this:
- Launch Terminal.
- Type: chflags hidden
- Press the spacebar.
- Drag the file or folder you want to hide from the Finder onto the Terminal window.
- You’ll see the path to the file or folder displayed in Terminal after the command you typed.
- Hit Return to execute the command.
The file or folder you dragged onto the Terminal window will now be hidden. To see it again, use one of the methods described above to see hidden files.
To make the file visible permanently again, use the steps above, but in step 2 type: chflags nohidden
As you can see, viewing hidden files and folders on your Mac is very straightforward. There are a number of ways to do it, and you can make them visible temporarily or permanently.
However, just because you can view hidden files, doesn’t mean you should — the files are usually hidden because accidentally deleting them or altering them could cause chaos on your Mac. So, while it’s fine to have a peek, don’t do anything with the hidden files unless you know what you’re doing.
If you want to declutter your Mac or uninstall applications, use a dedicated application like CleanMyMac X. It will safely remove all useless files, add-ons, broken login items, caches, large and old files you didn't know about. Most likely, you won't even need to look for hidden files — CleanMyMac will do all the job for you.
We also showed that many of those files are stored in Library folders, including the one in your User folder, ~/Library. That folder is hidden by default, but you can view it or make it permanently visible using the techniques described above.