In BBEdit, when you hit Command-O to open a file, the dialog box has this wonderful checkbox: Show Hidden Items. Once checked, it stays checked. This is great if, like me, you can constantly opening dotfiles in your home directory to edit.

Sublime Text, alas, has no such thing. You can navigate to hidden folders if you know the path by pressing the ~ (the tilde) in an Open dialog window1. But what if you’re in a directory & want to see the hidden files? You’re out of luck.

Unless, that is, you know the super-cool & also super-hidden key command to toggle the display of hidden files in an Open dialog window: Command-Shift-. (that’s a period at the end, which makes sense, since that period at the beginning of file names is what makes them invisible!). Press it once, & hidden files reveal themselves; press it again, & they disappear like a Romulan Bird of Prey2.

Oh, I am so going to use this command all the time!

  1. Actually, you can do that in BBEdit & pretty much any Open dialog window on your Mac. ↩

  2. http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Romulan_Bird-of-Prey_(23rd_century), for those of you who are Trek-ignorant. ↩