How do I unhide the desktop folder in my home folder?

Question

I've tried How to unhide files on Mac?, and chflags nohidden not unhiding hidden files to no avail. I want to unhide ~/desktop while I have iCloud desktop turned on.

Answer 1

While you can unhide folders, you cannot unhide the Desktop or Documents folder when using Desktop iCloud. Both it and the Documents folder are hidden by having the com.apple.iCloud.desktop extended attribute applied, remove that attribute and you are no longer using iCloud Desktop/Documents folders.

You could do something like ln -s "$HOME/Desktop" "$HOME/Desktop " (note the space) if you want to see a folder in your home folder.

Answer 2

Press ⇧ Shift + ⌘ Command + . . This key combination will display any hidden folders in your Mac's hard drive. Any hidden folders or files will appear as grayed-out. This keyboard shortcut can be done from any Finder window.