Why do some items in my Finder window appear grayed out?

In my finder window some items are grayed out. Why is that?

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I've taken more snapshots:

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Note: If I rename the file it is no longer grayed out.

Note 2: I noticed a intermediary file is being created that is immediately renamed:

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Note 3: I also noticed that the .DS_Store file is grayed out.

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The items you are seeing are invisible items. Names that start with a dot indicate the file should be hidden. If you changed finder to show hidden files, it will display them greyed out, but the files will work as normal. Besides having a name that starts with a dot, it is possible to set a special file attribute that will make finder hide the file.

If you want to turn the showing of hidden files back off, one option is to use the terminal, open it and use this command: defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles NO and then log out and back in.


there are some extended attributes on files such as:

  • com.apple.FinderInfo
  • com.apple.quarantine
  • Zone.Identifier

Learn how to display those attributes via the command line xattr file. if you have a huge amount of greyed out files/folders, you better execute in Terminal the find command like this:

  • change to the directory or Volume you want to inspect: cd /Volumes/BlaBlaBla/folder12
  • list all the file having an extended attribute: find . -xattr
  • if you get a list, then clear the attributes: find . -xattr -exec xattr -c {} ;