by Tom Nelson
Your Mac has a few secrets up its sleeve, hidden files and folders that are invisible to you. Apple hides these files and folders to prevent you from accidentally changing or deleting important data your Mac needs. You may occasionally need to view or edit one of these hidden files. To do so, you must first make it visible again.
Screen shot © Coyote Moon, Inc.
You can use Terminal to show or hide your Mac’s files, but Terminal can be a bit daunting for first-time users.
It also isn’t very convenient if all you need to do is open or save a file from within an application.