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Show File Extensions on the Mac for all Files

One of the biggest pain points for those who get started using Mac OS X after coming from a Windows world is that you cannot really see file extensions in OS X’s Finder. Many of these Mac newbies believe that there are no file extensions at all on OS X — but that is simply not true.

You can enable file extensions to show on Mac OS X on a global scale for all files, or for just a particular file. In this post, you will learn how to enable the visibility of file extensions globally on OS X — I am using OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) but this process works similarly on other iterations of OS X:

Minimize all open windows so that you can access the desktop. Click on an empty area of the desktop so that no other application window is active.
Select the Finder | Preferences menu option — this opens the Preferences dialog as shown in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1: Finder Preferences
Then click the Advanced tab so that your Preferences dialog looks like what you see in Figure 2, below — make sure you check the option that says Show all filename extensions.

Figure 2: Advanced tab of the Preferences dialog
That’s all you need to do. Close the Preferences dialog, and all your files will show extensions. In fact, all your applications (in Finder’s Application folder) will also now show the .app extension!

Did you want to show or hide a file extension for just one file? Yes, you can do that too.

Mac OS X Lion: Pausing and Resuming the 3.74 GB Download

Is it just me, or did you all find that it was not very intuitive how you could pause the Lion OS download from the App Store, and then resume it again. Even in today’s always-connected-with-a-fat-data-pipe days, 3.74 GB is not a very tiny download size!

I found a quick way, and wanted to share it with everyone else — so this is what you need to do — I am assuming that you have already purchased Lion on the App Store, and your download is proceeding, as can be seen within the visual indicator you see below the Lion icon on the Dock, as shown in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1: OS X Lion Visual Indicator

OK — let me assume that I want to pause this download now, and shut down my Mac. Actually pausing is easy right from the icon on the Dock — I can hold my mouse over the icon, and choose the Pause option from the resultant menu — unfortunately, thereafter you will find no Resume option in the same menu!

So this is what you do:

Choose the Apple Menu | App Store option to launch the App Store app.
Once App Store launches, click the Purchased icon on the top toolbar as shown in Figure 2 below. You will see the active downloads, including the OS X Lion download — click the Pause button towards the right of this download. Exit App Store, and shut down your Mac if required.

Figure 2: Pause your OS X Lion Download
When you have started your Mac again, and are ready to resume the OS X Lion download, just access App Store again, and click the Purchased icon. In the resultant window, you will notice a Resume button along with a message next to it that says “0 of 0 bytes”, as shown in Figure 3 below. Don’t get appalled by the “0 bytes” message — go ahead and click the Resume button.

Figure 3: Resume the OS X Lion Download
You may be presented a dialog that asks you to sign into your Apple account now, as shown in Figure 4. Enter your username, password, and click the Sign In button.

Figure 4: Sign in to the Apple App Store
The download will resume again, until it completes.