How to have the Finder show hidden directories and files

I suppose a lot of the work I do could be called “low level” – tasks such as installing and configuring server applications and frameworks. It bugs me that the Finder doesn’t show ALL of the directories and files on a Mac. For example, lets say I want to work with the /usr/local/bin directory. I’m forced to use the Terminal because the Finder won’t display the /usr directory:

Well, it turns out there’s an easy fix for this. Open Terminal, enter the following command, and press Enter.

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES

The change will take effect after you restart Finder. The Windows way of doing such a thing would be to restart the computer. But we don’t do Windows, do we? Finder can be restarted like this: hold down the option key, click and hold the Finder icon in the dock, and when the context menu pops up choose Relaunch. As you can see in the following screenshot, the Finder now shows all hidden files and directories, including the Unix directories such as /usr.

If for whatever reason you find that you’d like to reverse the change, follow the same procedure except replace YES with NO.

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles NO