Category: How To

How to Show Hidden File on a Mac

Tim Leave a comment

In the past, the only way I knew how to show hidden files on a mac was to run a terminal command which I had the commands show and hide aliased to.

# Show/hide hidden files in Finder
alias show="defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool true && killall Finder"
alias hide="defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool false && killall Finder"

This works great but is not the easiest command to remember and you have to open a terminal to run them. With the release of macOS Sierra Apple added a Finder keyboard shortcut that makes it possible to quickly show all the hidden files and folders. You just need to do the following:

  1. Open the Finder
  2. Browse any folder with hidden files
  3. Hold down Cmd + Shift + .  to toggle showing and hiding of files

This tip came from another great episode from Syntax.fm podcast. Be sure to check it out!

Speed Up Key Presses (macOS)

Tim 2 Comments

A recent episode of Syntax, the podcast about web development from Wes Bos and Scott Tolinski, a tip was mentioned on speeding up key presses on macOS. I have always been annoyed at how slow the cursor moves when navigating a large text file. After a simple change in the keyboard settings, I’m much happier with the speed of the cursor. It makes navigation large files much easier. If you are a developer, I would highly recommend making these changes.

If this is not fast enough for you, you can manually set them with these 2 commands(source)

defaults write -g InitialKeyRepeat -int 10 # default minimum is 15 (225 ms)
defaults write -g KeyRepeat -int 1 # default minimum is 2 (30 ms)

Let me know if this helps you. Leave a comment below.

Chrome Extension Keyboard Shortcuts

Tim 2 Comments

Wanted to share a quick tip on using keyboard shortcuts to activate chrome extensions. Up until now it never occurred to me to use a keyboard shortcut to activate an extension, but thanks to a user of my weather extension, I now have command + Ctrl + W mapped to open Weather. To setup your own keyboard shortcuts, browser to chrome://extensions/shortcuts. Leave a comment below of what other keyboard shortcuts you prefer.