"Show In Finder" won't open a new finder window

The "Show In Finder" action isn't working on Mac OS X Mountain Lion. The problem has just started to occur all the time, before it was a bit sporadic, but now it happens all the time.

Things that don't work:

In the chrome Downloads page clicking any of the "Show in Finder" links.
Right clicking a file in XCode and choosing "Show in Finder"

Things that work:

open . in terminal
command-n after command tabbing to Finder.

Things I've tried to fix the issue:

Opt - Right Click finder in the dock and relauching
Restarting my computer

Anybody ever experienced this issue?

Gavin Miller

Posted 2012-09-25T18:20:08.617

Reputation: 1 706

Experienced it... but no idea how I solved it other than possibly through OS updates. Command-clicking a Dock icon will probably not work as well? – Daniel Beck – 2012-09-25T18:36:27.783

@DanielBeck Command-clicking a dock icon does work – Gavin Miller – 2012-09-25T18:43:33.087

Just wondering. Do you use TotalFinder? This might be related. – Antonin Hildebrand – 2012-09-29T06:51:40.430

@Darwin nope. I don't use total finder. – Gavin Miller – 2012-09-29T20:37:40.180

I've seen it happen as well. Could it be that you're using Dropbox? – slhck – 2012-10-27T22:07:52.080

Have you used PathFinder? – Jean-Philippe Pellet – 2012-11-15T20:53:11.320

Answers

It is a bug introduced by Apple in 10.8.2.

Workaround: when it happens, in Terminal run the following:

sudo killall -KILL appleeventsd

Alternatively, use Activity Monitor to kill appleeventsd. More information on the issue.

Dae

Posted 2012-09-25T18:20:08.617

Reputation: 465

1I had to restart after following this step for it to take effect in 10.10 – Drew C – 2015-06-25T15:34:23.387

1This didn't work for me on 10.8.2. – Joe Mornin – 2012-11-09T18:32:03.460

1Didn't work for me either. – Jean-Philippe Pellet – 2012-11-15T20:50:56.473

2Worked on 10.8.2. Would have accepted sooner, but stopped happening after I posted the question -- one day I will find Murphy and slap him with a piece of peanut butter toast. Peanut butter side up! – Gavin Miller – 2012-11-19T16:12:35.610

1Terminating appleeventsd works for me as well. It also fixes an issue where Archive Utility stops responding whenever you extract an archive. – Lri – 2013-01-12T09:51:58.000

didn;t work for me but @CraftyThumber worked – Muhammad Junaid Sidhu – 2013-01-23T08:02:39.663

Didn't work for me. – Viktor Hedefalk – 2013-02-04T15:51:55.443

registred on this site to give you a PLUS for this – Peter Lapisu – 2013-02-27T09:37:37.657

Doesn't work for me, on 10.8.2 – Daniel R Hicks – 2013-07-23T17:35:14.993

I had to delete the lockfile also:

rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist
rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist.lockfile

and then restarting the finder (or you can reboot):

killall Finder

sjbx

Posted 2012-09-25T18:20:08.617

Reputation: 301

Didn't work for me. – Jean-Philippe Pellet – 2012-11-15T20:52:29.947

Running sudo killall -KILL appleeventsd didn't work for me. Simply deleting my Finder preferences did, though. – Ashley Coolman – 2013-01-11T13:54:38.807

Worked for me too! However, it undid the update to show hidden files that I'd done minutes earlier: http://www.mikesel.info/show-hidden-files-mac-os-x-10-7-lion/

– Daniel R Hicks – 2013-07-23T17:42:47.413

(But redoing that update to show hidden files didn't provoke the show in finder problem again. The first time I did the update it didn't "take", probably because the preferences file was already partly corrupted -- had to do the update twice.) – Daniel R Hicks – 2013-07-23T17:52:13.480

In Yosemite 10.10.2, this is what I did to fix it:

open a new Terminal window and run this command

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE

Then restart Finder with

killall Finder

Open a new Finder window with right click Finder icon -> New Finder window (because the bug prevents the normal left click action), press Shift + Cmd + G (Go to) and paste

~/Library/Preferences

Delete

com.apple.finder.plist
com.apple.dock.plist
com.apple.systemuiserver.plist

Leave the Finder window open (I don´t know if it is necessary, but that´s what I did) Then switch to Terminal and paste

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE

Restart Finder again

killall Finder

and finally

sudo killall -KILL appleeventsd

Restart your Mac, and chances are that everything is back to normal. Just remember that deleting the Finder preferences removes any custom views/side bar preferences, so just go through Finder -> Preferences again and fix things the way you like it.

Andreas

Posted 2012-09-25T18:20:08.617

Reputation: 41

I hope this will work for many of you.

Open Finder
Open the Utilities folder
Open a terminal window
Copy and paste the following line in:

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES

Press return
Now hold ‘alt’ on the keyboard and right click on the Finder icon
Click on Relaunch

You should find you will now be able to see any hidden files or folders. One you are done, perform the steps above however, replace the terminal command in step 4 with:

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles NO

If the above is not working for you, You can go for online apps like show hidden files mac.

Morgan Stevens

Posted 2012-09-25T18:20:08.617

Reputation: 1