Opening MacOS X Finder Window on A Hidden Folder from Terminal

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Most Unix/Linux based operating system such as Ubuntu or Mac OS X has their own method to hide a specific file or folder from a File Manager application. A file or folder with a dot character (.) at the beginning on its name normally will not be shown by a simple ls command or File Manager application except configured to do so.

On a Mac OS X Finder application, files and folders name beginning with a dot character also won’t be shown to the user. Sometimes it is convenient to manipulate files or folders using GUI rather than using a Terminal/console application.

To show a Finder application window on a hidden folder is relatively easy on a Mac OS X by doing the following step-by-step instruction below:

  1. Open a terminal window/console application.
  2. Go to the hidden folder you’d like to open using the terminal/console application. You can change directory using cd command. For example:

    aryo@MacBookPro ~$ cd .config
    aryo@MacBookPro ~/.config$ ls -al
    total 0
    drwxr-xr-x 6 aryo staff 204 Sep 18 05:54 .
    drwxr-xr-x+ 67 aryo staff 2278 Dec 12 13:01 ..
    drwxr-xr-x 3 aryo staff 102 Aug 29 00:40 MusicBrainz
    drwxr-xr-x 3 aryo staff 102 Oct 17 05:29 git
    drwxr-xr-x 3 aryo staff 102 Jun 30 10:18 stetic
    drwxr-xr-x 4 aryo staff 136 Jun 30 10:18 xbuild
    aryo@MacBookPro ~/.config$
  3. Then execute:
    open .
    And a new Finder window will show you the content of .config/ directory.