10.5: Hide the Time Machine volume in the Finder
Jan 30, '08 07:30:01AM
Contributed by: adamb529
I don't like to have icons cluttering my desktop. I have figured out a way to remove the Time Machine volume icon from the Finder without affecting Time Machine. I want other external drives to be visible, so the Finder's preferences are of no help here. Apple actually provides everything needed. I will explain how to remove the volume for Finder using Developer Tools, and without having Developer Tools installed (like me). Please note that Time Machine Volume refers to the volume Time Machine is backing up to, or any volume you would like to hide.
To make this work, you need to have the Unix program SetFile installed. If you have the Developer Tools installed, you have it already, and you can skip the following steps. To install SetFile, do this:
- Download a copy of Pacifist from CharlesSoft.
- Insert the Mac OS X Leopard Install DVD that you bought or that came with your computer.
- Launch Pacifist and select Open Package, then navigate to: /Volumes/Mac OS X Install DVD/Optional Installs/XCode Tools/XCodeTools.mpkg.
- Search for SetFile. Choose the second choice on the list (the first one that is not an alias) and click Install in the upper left corner. Type your password if necessary.
Now that you have SetFile installed, here's what you need to do:
- Open Terminal.
- Run the following code, replacing Time Machine Volume with the proper name: SetFile -a V '/Volumes/Time Machine Volume/'. (Note: SetFile should be on your path automatically, either due to the install of the Dev Tools, or because Pacifist installs it in /usr/bin. If this doesn't work for some reason, you'll need to provide the full path to SetFile.)
- Restart the Finder with killall "Finder", or by holding Option, then clicking and holding on the Finder's Dock icon and choosing Relaunch from the pop-up menu.
If you ever want to restore the Time Machine volume's icon to the Finder, run the following code in Terminal: SetFile -a v '/Volumes/Time Machine Volume/'. You'll need to kill the Finder again to make the changes take effect.
I hope other find this as useful as I did. Time Machine still sees any volumes that you have hidden from the Finder. If you ever needed to browse using the Finder, you can always use the Go » Go to Folder command, and type /Volumes/Time Machine Volume. Note that this hint removes the volume from the Finder's sidebar, the computer window, and the desktop. Enjoy!
[robg adds: Even if you don't have the Dev Tools installed, you probably already have a copy of SetFile somewhere on your machine -- see this hint for instructions on how to find it. The submitted hint referred to logging out and in to have the changes take effect, but that's not necessary based on my testing.]
Comments (24)
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20080124184544791