View hidden folders on MacOS Mojave? cmd+shift+. does not work Since I'm not really great with using the terminal, I would like to see hidden folders on my Mac through the regular user interface. However, I cannot show my hidden folders. I tried things I found on the internet but they did not work for me. I tried

cmd+shift+dot - nothing happens

settings &gt; Keyboard &gt; turning on and off &quot;Use F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys&quot;

settings &gt; Keyboard &gt; Shortcuts &gt; Restore Defaults

terminal.app &gt; defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles [&quot;yes&quot;/&quot;YES&quot;/&quot; &quot;] source

at the folder I want to view the hidden contents of, I pressed Alt while clicking Go. after the &quot;Library&quot; folder showed up in &quot;Go,&quot; I clicked it and saw many folders in Library, but still didn't see any folders with . in front. source


My main goal is to copy and paste into a .gitignore file that is stored in a specific folder on my desktop. I am having troubles doing it through the terminal so I thought this would be easier but it is apparently not. :)
Question: How can I fix this issue and allow myself to see hidden folders on my Mac?
I don't have a strong background in this stuff and am not trained in computer science/tech stuff.
I have macOS Mojave.
There are two types of hidden items (files or folders) on macOS:

Those which start with . whose hidden bit it set by default.
Those with no starting ., but chflags set to hidden. Run man chflags to see more info.


I clicked it and saw many folders in Library, but still didn't see any folders with . in front

Those folders are of the second type.

However, I cannot show my hidden folders.

Let's see if there's a problem with hidden files itself. In Terminal, run :
cd ~/Downloads
mkdir test_hidden &amp;&amp; cd test_hidden
touch empty
touch .empty_h
open .

In this folder that opens, do you see files (dis)appearing if you toggle command+shift+. ?
Update: Restarting and running killall Finder helped.
For the .gitignore file, use ls -a command to list all items in a directory. If there is a .gitignore file there, you can run
open .gitgignore

to open it with default text editor. Or nano .gitignore. Or specify a text editor:

Can I open files in TextEdit from the Terminal in Mac OS X?