Comments on: Toggling File Visibility in the Finder via AppleScript

By: kristofer

kristofer — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 17:16:05 +0000

Thanks for the suggestions and improvements, guys! Great stuff. [Update: There is a good thread on this topic at macscripter.net.]

By: Eric

Eric — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 21:16:33 +0000

The the script posted by kristofer produces errors when run in OS X v10.5; the most serious of these is that the shell script as written doesn’t seem to accept the options of 0 or 1, but rather only seems to work when the string “ON” is used.

Thus, if one wishes, the prettier dialogs of his script as well as the error checking can be rather easily incorporated into the original, which runs very quickly on my MB-Pro:

—-

set onOff to do shell script “defaults read com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles”
if onOff = “NO” or onOff = “OFF” or onOff = “0″ then
set newState to “SHOW”
set OnOffCommand to “defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles ON”
else
set newState to “HIDE”
set OnOffCommand to “defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles OFF”
end if

display dialog “Do you want to ” & newState & ” invisible files? (This will restart the Finder.)” buttons {“Cancel”, (newState & ” Invisible Files”)} default button 2 with icon note
copy the result as list to {buttonPressed}

if the buttonPressed is not “Cancel” then
try
tell application “Finder” to quit
do shell script OnOffCommand
delay 1
tell application “Finder” to launch
on error errorMsg number errorNum
display dialog “Error (” & errorNum & “):” & return & return & errorMsg buttons “Cancel” default button 1 with icon caution
end try
end if

By: kristofer

kristofer — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 21:44:14 +0000

A better version of the script.
--Bruce Philips --macscripter.net


try

	do shell script "/usr/bin/defaults read com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles"

	get result as integer

on error

	get 0

end try
set i to (result + 1) mod 2 -- Get opposite of current value
tell application "Finder"

	activate

	get item (i + 1) of {"Hide", "Show"}

	display dialog (result & " all hidden files in Finder?") buttons {"Cancel", (result & " Hidden Files")} default button 2 with icon note

	quit

end tell

try do shell script "/usr/bin/defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles " & i launch application "Finder" on error errorMsg number errorNum display dialog "Error (" & errorNum & "):" & return & return & errorMsg buttons "Cancel" default button 1 with icon caution end try