Unhide Folder!?

Joined
Jul 17, 2007
Messages
68
Reaction score
0
Points
6
Your Mac's Specs
iMac 20" 2.16
Hi,

Trying to take the dumb out of Apple and failing.

Reformatted my iMac, didn't back up Music... it was on my iPod. Plugged iPod back in and it is synced with another computer... so dumb.

Anyway. Copied the music off of my iPod but the folder is hidden on my desktop. No unhide controls can be found. I need to import these songs into iTunes but it cannot see the hidden folder. Hence... Apple is dumb.

How do I perminantly unhide the folder and its contents?
 
Joined
Jan 12, 2009
Messages
1,096
Reaction score
19
Points
38
Location
Prague, Czech Republic
Your Mac's Specs
2,4Ghz 15" unibody
How do you know the folder is hidden on your desktop? Did you name it ".folder_name"? Could you maybe rephrase your question to make it more clear as to what you actually did?
 
Joined
Sep 9, 2009
Messages
5,473
Reaction score
201
Points
63
Location
Down Under :D
Your Mac's Specs
Back to my old 2.2GHz C2D MB after selling my MBP and wondering what my next Mac will be :)

vansmith

Senior Member
Joined
Oct 19, 2008
Messages
19,924
Reaction score
559
Points
113
Location
Queensland
Your Mac's Specs
Mini (2014, 2018, 2020), MBA (2020), iPad Pro (2018), iPhone 13 Pro Max, Watch (S6)
Hi,

Trying to take the dumb out of Apple and failing.

Reformatted my iMac, didn't back up Music... it was on my iPod. Plugged iPod back in and it is synced with another computer... so dumb.

Anyway. Copied the music off of my iPod but the folder is hidden on my desktop. No unhide controls can be found. I need to import these songs into iTunes but it cannot see the hidden folder. Hence... Apple is dumb.

How do I perminantly unhide the folder and its contents?
How did you get from your mistake to Apple being to blame? Something isn't working, caused entirely by you, and you're blaming Apple?

Regardless, are you sure the folder exists on your Desktop? If it's hidden, how do you know? If it is hidden and you saw it, how did you see it?
 
OP
P
Joined
Jul 17, 2007
Messages
68
Reaction score
0
Points
6
Your Mac's Specs
iMac 20" 2.16
How do you know the folder is hidden on your desktop? Did you name it ".folder_name"? Could you maybe rephrase your question to make it more clear as to what you actually did?


Oh dear...

When you browse the files on an iPod you cannot see the music. To get to the music you need to change the finder to show hidden files / folders. These then appear semi transparent.

This is how you know they are hidden.

How did the files get from iPod to Desktop. Drag and Drop.

How did you get from your mistake to Apple being to blame? Something isn't working, caused entirely by you, and you're blaming Apple?

Please... I am not here to start a debate on why Apple are dumb. The fact is that Apple have a 'we know best' philosophy. Often they do know best, sometimes they use this as an excuse to crush their rivals (iPhone 4.0 SDK bars un-Jobsian code translation ? The Register), sometimes they are wrong (See here where I have a hidden folder containing countless hours of work transferring hundreds of CD's to iTunes which I now cannot unhide. A folder filled with contents I own, on a computer I own, that I cannot modify the properties of.)

Regardless, are you sure the folder exists on your Desktop? If it's hidden, how do you know? If it is hidden and you saw it, how did you see it?

See above
 
Joined
Oct 1, 2007
Messages
7,163
Reaction score
275
Points
83
Location
UK
Your Mac's Specs
Mac Mini i5 (2014 High Sierra), iPhone X, Apple Watch, iPad Pro 12.9, AppleTV (4)
Well ok....

Files on the iPod are hidden for a reason! But there's no point into going into what you should or shouldn't have done or even who's to blame. It's not going to resolve your problem.

So let's start over. Do you still have the music files on your iPod?
If so download and run Yamipod.

It will let you copy music, playlists etc straight to your Mac.
 
Joined
Mar 2, 2010
Messages
7
Reaction score
0
Points
1
Try this

open terminal

cd ~/Desktop
ls -larth
is the folder you are looking for there ? if yes
mv ~/Desktop/.your_folder ~/Desktop/your_folder
 
Joined
Jul 14, 2008
Messages
1,227
Reaction score
8
Points
38
Location
UK
Your Mac's Specs
iMac 2.66 GHz 20", iPad Mini2 32GB, iPhone6 64GB, Watch Sport 42mm Black, iPad Air 2 128GB
I want to make a folder visible.

In Terminal, the folder permissions show as drwx------@

I understand the drwx------ part. Not sure what effect the @ has, but there is another folder with the same permissions which is visible, so I don't really understand why the first one is not.

As the folder is in my Home directory, is it likely to cause any problems if I make it visible?

How do I do that please? I can't find the option in Finder and not sure what command is required in Terminal.

The folders are:

Code:
drwx------@ 41 tkemp  staff   1.4K  6 Jul 20:31 Library
drwx------@ 24 tkemp  staff   816B  8 Jul 17:07 Dropbox


Library is hidden but Dropbox is visible.
 
Joined
May 14, 2009
Messages
2,052
Reaction score
136
Points
63
Location
Near Whitehorse, Yukon
Your Mac's Specs
2012 MBP i7 2.7 GHz 15" Matte - 16 GB RAM - 120 GB Intel SSD - 500 GB DataDoubler Mac OS 10.9
Library is hidden… are you using a dev release of Lion?

In any case try,
Code:
chflags nohidden ~/Library
in Terminal


EDIT:
And get Cloak, for even easier hiding/unhiding
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/31354/cloak
 
Joined
Sep 9, 2011
Messages
7
Reaction score
0
Points
1
Thanks McYukon, I was sharing Perad's pain... and frustration - being a recent convert from PC to Mac. Mac does have many but not all the answers of a PC. In this case, Cloak was the perfect answer and dead easy to use. Highly recommended. iTunes sorted once more... ;)
 

Shop Amazon


Shop for your Apple, Mac, iPhone and other computer products on Amazon.
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites.
Top