View hidden files with a keyboard shortcut

HowToGeek has come up with an absolutely marvelous solution to quickly toggle the display of hidden files on your Windows computer. Often you have to view hidden files when making changes to system files or configuration files of softwares. Enabling the "show hidden files" option in Windows is a long process. The author of HowToGeek has coded a simple application in AutoHotkey script that runs in the background and toggles the status of the "show hidden files" option with a shortcut key combination - Win+H. There is no user interface to keep memory usage at a minimum, but you can customize with by editing the script which is provided on the site.

Once the application is running, all you have to do is hit the Win+H shortcut key.

And immediately any hidden files will become visible. Hit the same shortcut key and the folders become hidden again.

To make this application auto start, copy it to your startup folder C:\Documents and Settings\%username\Start Menu\Programs\Startup. Since there is no GUI, the only way to close the application is by killing the process through the task manager.

This application is going to make my life a lot easier. I wish it was available earlier. Download ToggleHiddenFiles.