I went to follow your instructions one by one. I clicked Command+F but finder didn't come up. Darn. I pulled finder up my usual way to look for the files that were still in EasyFind. There were two. I went to see if I could delete them before I put them into the search in Finder. They then were deleted just fine! I can't explain why it worked all of a sudden but I am glad to know how to find invisible files now. Thank you.

Rita



Originally Posted By: joemikeb
Originally Posted By: artie505
Hi, Rita,

If that literally means that files you expect to be in /Library (or, as the case may be, ~/Library) don't appear to be there, it may be because they're invisible.

ShowHiddenFiles 2.0.6 or HideSwitch 1.6.0 may be helpful. (There's also a Terminal command to toggle visibility if you want to get involved.)

Files can be invisible as Artie suggests, or they can be tagged as System files which will also hide them. The easy way to find those is:
  1. click ⌘F on the desktop which brings up a Finder search window.
  2. enter the name of a file you are searching for in the search bar at the top of the window.
  3. At the top of this window be sure "Search: This Mac" is selected,
  4. then click on the + sign at the far right end of the "kind" line to bring up another condition and add "File Visibility — Visible or Invisible".
  5. Click on the + again and add "System Files — Are included".
  6. If you are unsure of the file name leave the filename at the top empty and add another condition "Name — matches/contains/begins with/ends with/is/is not — and a name or name fragment".
This is an often overlooked and very powerful capability of Finder that requires no third party app to do its thing.

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