A folder called 'private' has appeard in my root folder out of nowhere..

This folder is supposed to be there.

But it is also supposed to be one of the "invisible" folders.

Somehow you have made it visible - maybe via some third party software?

charlie

To hide everything that is supposed to be hidden, enter the following two lines in to the Terminal, one at a time, pressing Enter after each one.

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles false

killall Finder

You have to enter the line above that first. Sounds dumb for me to mention that, but you don't say that you entered the first line, only the killall line.

Open the Terminal again and copy/paste each line into the Terminal, in the order listed, and press Enter.

I don't know why Kurt's command isn't working for you -- are you copying and pasting it in, or just typing it? You must put it in exactly as written observing case and any spaces -- and I don't know if this will make any difference, but TinkerTool, a free little program, will allow you to hide and show invisible files with an easy to use interface.

http://www.bresink.com/osx/TinkerTool.html

(Keep the .dmg somewhere for future use, or just keep the program icon in the Dock -- it doesn't get installed in Applications. It gets mounted newly each time you need to use it.)

After you have it open, go to Finder in the MenuBar and select "Show hidden and system files," then hit "relaunch Finder." In your situation, I'm not certain whether this will now show all hidden files or not. If it shows them, then uncheck "Show hidden...." and relaunch the Finder again. All the hidden files should now be restored to their usual invisibility.

If not, then something is amiss.

I do remember now seeing this once before a month or so ago. The usual "defaults" command didn't work because the folders themselves had been made visible somehow. That is, their attribute had been changed to be visible all the time.

One possible solution here.

the extended attribute com.apple.FinderInfo has likely been removed/altered ?

No, it's still there. I just tried it a little while ago, and it still works. Actually, I ran the command to first show hidden files, and then hid them again. It can't hurt anything, so try this:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles true

killall Finder

The "true" statement at the end will cause all hidden files and folders to appear as grayed icons. So you'll see .DS_Store on the desktop, along with one or two others.

Now run the commands in Terminal again. Paste in the first line, backspace to get rid of true and type in false. Then run the killall Finder command. Doing that briefly closes down the Finder, which relaunches itself. That causes it to read its preference file again and see that it's been changed to false.

Hi,

Your /private folder has somehow lost its "hidden" flag, which needs to be put back.

Open Terminal (in /Applications/Utilities), and copy-paste in the following line, followed by typing Return:

sudo chflags hidden /private

Enter your admin password when prompted (it will not echo on the screen).

sudo chflags hidden /private

Edit: Ah! That's the one I was looking for. Thanks, jsd2.

whilst that will hide it, /private doesn't have the hidden flag set by default.