This gets asked a lot especially from someone who just switched from Windows to macOS. When you open a New Finder Window on your mac. You might want to see all the hidden files in your folder as well.

The quickest way to do it is just by using a keyboard shortcut:

1. Open a New Finder Window on the folder where you want to see the hidden files.
2. Press ⌘ Command + ⇧ Shift + . (Period). To be exact, hold down the Command and Shift keys together, then press the Period key.
3. The hidden files and folders will appear semi-transparent in the finder (see below).

Of course, some people may find it too distracting, in which case you can always hide them again by using the same keyboard shortcut.

If you have used Homebrew to manage your packages, you can also use it to install fonts on your macOS so long as the fonts are available. And as you’ll see in the example below, this is way easier (and quicker) than downloading the fonts and install them conventionally.

If you haven’t, it’s quick to install Homebrew. Just open your Terminal and type in the following:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

For the latest update of this command, please check Homebrew’s website. You just need to copy the command line and paste it in your Terminal.

Here are some commands you need to know. You need to run this once:

brew tap homebrew/cask-fonts

Then, as I want to try to install some fonts with ligatures from Microsoft such as Cascadia Code and Fira Code, I want to search them first if those fonts are available.

To search the font, you can type in this command:

brew search font- | grep cascadia

Which would give the result (at this time):

font-cascadia-code
font-cascadia-code-pl
font-cascadia-mono
font-cascadia-mono-pl

We’re in luck, it’s available.

Important: The font name is all in lowercase and it’s case-sensitive. For example, you will not find anything if you typed in “Cascadia” as your search word.

Now, we just need to install the Cascadia Font by typing this command:

brew cask install font-cascadia-code

Once completed, your font is installed and active. But in this specific example, if you use Visual Studio Code, even though the font is active, you still need to enable the font ligatures before you can see it.

If you use Sublime Text on the other hand, the change is instant.

That’s all there is to it. So far, we’ve just installed one font Cascadia Code, if you also want to install Fira Code font, you can do it on your own. That would be a good exercise for you.

Additional Note

If you just run the command brew search font- without grep, you will get a list of all available fonts you can install via Homebrew.

Further Reading

How to Enable Font Ligatures in Visual Studio Code