How to see hidden files in finder on Mac OS X

Certain prefixes to files, such as a period '.' will normally make them disappear in a finder window. You can change this behavior with a couple command lines. In case you don't know how to start the Terminal it's under Utilities within your Applications folder. To see hidden items, type these two lines in your Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder

Don't worry, the second line doesn't hurt any innocent windows -- it will restart your finder windows so they reflect the new behavior. To go back to hiding hidden folders, do the same thing again except with FALSE instead of TRUE.

Also, in case you didn't know how to see hidden files from the terminal, just type 'ls -a' which lists (that's the "ls" part) all (that's the "-a" part) files. Without the "-a" it excludes all files beginning with a dot.