After some manipulations to get rid of a PUP (that damn snap.do), all the extensions of the music titles I downloaded (.mp3, .flv) disappeared in my file. Any way to restore them ? They really are indispensable. Music plays fine. (Windows 7).
It became the standard in Windows to hide file extensions, which made things less confusing for most users and attempted to push the “there are no such things as programs, only documents” model and irritates the hell out of us who are aware how all the files interact and want to know what kind of file each one is because we’re not cotton-wrapped Mac users.
In both Windows and Mac, the default is to hide the extensions, and in both it is possible to change the settings to show them. Not all Mac users are cotton-wrapped.
Hey! Some of us Mac users want to know too. Wanting the machine to work doesn’t mean we’re afraid of files.
Yeah. I’m a Mac user, and all my extensions are visible. I can even see the “hidden” system files and directories. Most users don’t give a damn, but it’s easy enough to switch from the default to enable extensions if that’s important to you. (Although showing hidden files takes a quick trip into Terminal to accomplish.)
It’s Finder > Preferences > Advanced > Show all filename extensions. Odd, as I actually do have that turned off, yet I see filename extensions.
Frankly, I wish all OSes would drop the “feature” of being able to open documents by double clicking them as well as no longer allow hiding extensions. It makes it too easy to disguise executables as documents. That’s exactly how this cryptlock “virus” (which is actually a trojan) is propagated.
For a Windows machine it’s sort of the opposite, in any open folder menu go to: Tools > Folder Options > View > uncheck ‘Hide extensions for known file types’. At least up to Windows 7 anyway…
It worked !
Forever grateful.
Both Apple and Microsoft spent years and years trying to make applications and programs “go invisible” - the model wasn’t that you used Word or Photoshop or whatever, or even that you “used the computer” - you just worked with documents of varying types, the way you would on an old-style desktop. The approach has its merits but no real purpose or advantage… which didn’t keep the big players in desktop computer from trying to shove the model down our throats for an OS generation or two.
We might be getting a little closer, naturally, in the tablet era. But think of a computer like a well-equipped wood or metal shop. You don’t “work with” chair legs or planks or engine heads or whatever; you use drills and lathes and planers to manipulate those. Just as we still use Word etc. to wrangle “documents.”
As in, files starting with a dot show up in Finder? I’ve tried to find that-- What’s the command line for it?
The key in the Finder’s plist is “AppleShowAllFiles”. You have to set it to true, which I guess you would do with a defaults write command. But bear in mind that Finder does not recheck that setting frequently, you will have to relaunch it every time you want to change the view.
beliketheotherguys
Note that even with “Show extensions” set, some extensions in MS-Windows still won’t show by default. The worst of these is .url. So someone sends you a file called “Funny.txt.url” and it appears as “Funny.txt”. You think there’s no harm in opening a .txt file and instead you are opening your browser to a web page that could be loaded with malware.
More info about this here. Note that if you do display the .url extension, then favorites/bookmarks in Explorer/IE will be “sitename.url” instead of “sitename”. But that’s a good thing in terms of improved security.
if you use a file manager program in Windows, you can find they will operate better (can see two Panes) and it can show all extensions.