Since plist.lockfiles do not contain any useful information for the user and almost double the content of and clutter the Preferences folders in /Library and ~/Library, I've been looking for a way to hide those files. With help from Yvan Koenig of MacScripter in this topic (I'm flex20 in that forum), I wrote an AppleScript "Hide Unhide plist.lockfile.scpt," which provides a quick and easy way of hiding or unhiding all those pesky files.
You will need an admin password to run the script because some of the ".plist.lockfile" files can only be changed by administrators. You can add the script to your AppleScript menu, or save it as an app, such as "Hide Unhide plist.lockfile.app," that you can keep anywhere you like, as I did.
Here's the script:
-- Hide Unhide plist.lockfile -- version 2.0 display dialog ¬ "Hide or Unhide the plist.lockfile files in the Preferences folders in /Library and ~/Library." & return & ¬ return & "Will require to enter an administrator password." & return with title "Hide or Unhide the ¬ plist.lockfile files" buttons {"Cancel", "Hide", "Unhide"} default button 1 giving up after 60 set dialogResult to result set giveUp to gave up of dialogResult if giveUp is true then error number -128 -- Cancel on giving up to cancel the script. set user_choice to button returned of dialogResult -- Set the user choice. -- Process the user choice. Will require to enter an admin password. if user_choice is "Hide" then do shell script "chflags hidden /Library/Preferences/*.plist.lockfile" with administrator privileges do shell script "chflags hidden ~/Library/Preferences/*.plist.lockfile" with administrator privileges else if user_choice is "Unhide" then do shell script "chflags nohidden /Library/Preferences/*.plist.lockfile" with administrator privileges do shell script "chflags nohidden ~/Library/Preferences/*.plist.lockfile" with administrator privileges end if