In Snow Leopard, how do I make hidden directories visible?

From Terminal.app:

SetFile -a v F00 F01

You can see the raw attribute data with:

xattr -l F00 F01

SetFile is in the Developer Tools package. If you can't install that, you can try to manipulate the extended attributes directly using xattr.

A directory whose only extended attribute is invisibility looks like this:

com.apple.FinderInfo:
00000000  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 40 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |........@.......|
00000010  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|

If your xattr output matches that, you should be safe just deleting the com.apple.FinderInfo attribute:

xattr -d com.apple.FinderInfo F00

If it doesn't exactly match, you should be safe rewriting the attribute after subtracting that '4' from that position:

mac% xattr -l F00
com.apple.FinderInfo:
00000000  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 40 10 00 00 00 00 00 00  |........@.......|
00000010  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00000020
mac% xattr -wx com.apple.FinderInfo 0000000000000000001000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 F00
mac% xattr -l chgfndrcom.apple.FinderInfo:
00000000  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 10 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00000010  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00000020

wfaulk

Posted 2009-10-10T14:32:17.673

Reputation: 5 692

I was wondering how to read the long output of xattr, i.e. how did you know what the extended attribute looks like for an invisible dir - is there a manpage for that? – 0sh – 2011-08-15T22:54:59.847

Found it here, page 13.

– 0sh – 2011-08-15T23:29:43.967

Excellent, thank you. Note that SetFile is part of the Developer Tools, so you’ll need to have those installed. – Paul D. Waite – 2009-10-10T15:13:04.330

Oh, good call on the Developer Tools. – wfaulk – 2009-10-10T15:36:17.410

In Snow Leopard, how do I make hidden directories visible?

Answers