$ defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles yes
Other options are here, I wish I remembered all those I had changed because I still haven't gotten by Finder back to how I had it:
or Option + ,
You can then drag + drop other folders into the side pane. Also worth learning the finder keyboard shortcuts.
Because it isn't obvious, or even really very easy to find.
Also, people will spend days customizing their Linux systems, but think OS X needs to be exactly the way they want it out of the box. Why is that? I agree the software quality has declined over the past few years, but many people here seem to be nitpicking.
But it's shitty UX. You can navigate to folders, except this arbitrary list of them that you can't control, in which case you go somewhere else to navigate to them.
And the 3 or 4 ways to view the folders, in (at least) one of them you can't create a new folder, but others you can. Brilliant.
.. = parent directory
Here's the funny thing: Click the Go menu in Finder, and look down at the bottom where it says Go to Folder...
See the shortcut? Yup, it's Command-Shift-G.
I have no idea why I never paid attention to that before.
Keeps getting hidden and you have to set a preference option via the command line to show it... only for it get hidden on the next OS update. Very frustrating!
That said, I preferred that they never removed it, but for the common user, they wont ever need it.
To get to it, you can also hold down Option when pressing the Go menu item.
showfiles=`defaults read com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles` if [ "$showfiles" = "TRUE" ]; then defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE else defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE fi
In combination with the spotlight search it's really fast ;)
Edit: Formatting isn't that nice in the comments, here's a little gist which is pretty much the same. https://gist.github.com/rprieto/7349079
Why are such useful things so incredibly obscure?
Go to... has a menu entry and a shortcut in the finder...
What's with the stupid column per directory level? This is an extremely bad use of display space.
Haven't used Windows in a long time, and the equivalent in Linux is useless. (Or, more precisely, I don't use it.) But there are a number of irritations that have been there for a long, long time.