TIL: MacOS keyboard shortcut to show hidden files: Command + Shift + .

MacOS has a simple but not widely known keyboard shortcut that lets you toggle the visibility of hidden files and folders in Finder:

⌘ + ⇧ + .   (Command + Shift + Period)

Hidden files and folders on macOS are those that begin with a period (dot) character, like .git or .config. By default, these files are hidden from view to prevent accidental modification of important system or application configuration files.

Before I learned this keyboard shortcut, I used to rely on terminal commands like:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES

followed by killall Finder to show hidden files, which was much more cumbersome.

Interestingly, there's a keyboard shortcut but there's no menu item for it. At least not anywhere I could find.

The beauty of this keyboard shortcut is that:

1. It works instantly - no need to restart Finder
2. It's temporary - only affects the current Finder session
3. It's toggleable - press it again to hide the hidden files

This shortcut is particularly useful when working with:

• Version control repositories (accessing .git folders)
• Web development projects (editing .htaccess files)
• Application settings (modifying .config files)
• Package managers (working with .npm or .yarn directories)
• Cursor and .cursorrules files

It's one of those small productivity tricks that saves a lot of time once you commit it to muscle memory. Now whenever I need to check a hidden configuration file, it's just a three-key shortcut away instead of a terminal command that I'd likely have to look up.