How to see .htaccess under Mac OS X

One the the most frustrating things I encountered developing under Mac is when I’m trying to access .htaccess files. By default hidden files under Mac are, well, hidden.

I found a couple of ways of showing hidden files, but none of them was very convinient. The closest thing I came to regarding ease of use was simply opening the Terminal and writing a couple of commands to show the hidden files. Then I discovered Automator, a hidden gem, probably one the best tools you can find on Mac OS X.

What Automator does is simply let’s you create workflows of commands and actions. So for example I can mimic the actions and commands I’m doing when I open my Terminal and write the show hidden file command and make it automatic.

So here it is:

Step 1:

Open Automator. (It’s in your Applications folder)

Step 2:

We need to mimic our actions, in Automator we need to use a Shell Script. In the library pane go to Automator then drag Run Shell Script onto your workflow.

Step 3:

In that little box that appears write the following commands:

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder

The first line tells Automator to show all the files and the second line to restart Finder. This command is needed to show the hidden files in Finder.

Step 4:

Save this workflow as a Finder plugin. You can do this by going to File -> Save as Plug-in. In the following window write a name for this action and make sure you select the Plug-in for: Finder.

Step 5:

For hiding the files repeat from Step 2 except you write the following commands in the textbox:

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
killall Finder

Save it as plug-in.

Testing it:

Now go to Finder -> Right Click and under the Automator popup you can see your 2 workflows.

That’s it. Now every time you want to show your hidden files you can do it from Finder.