<page xmlns="http://projectmallard.org/1.0/"
      type="topic" style="task"
      id="files-hidden">

  <info>
    <link type="guide" xref="files#faq"/>
    <desc>Make a file invisible, so you can't see it in the file manager.</desc>

    <revision pkgversion="3.2" date="2011-10-09" status="candidate"/>

    <credit type="author">
      <name>Phil Bull</name>
      <email>philbull@gmail.com</email>
    </credit>
    <include href="legal.xml" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"/>
  </info>

<title>Hide a file</title>

  <p>You can hide files by renaming them with a <key>.</key> at the beginning of
 their name. Hidden files are invisible by default; they are not displayed in
 the file manager, but they are still there in the folder.</p>

  <p>To hide a file, <link xref="files-rename">rename it</link> with a "." at
 the beginning of its name. For example, to hide a file <file>example.txt</file>,
 you should rename it to <file>.example.txt</file>.</p>

<note style="tip">
  <p>You can hide folders in the same way that you can hide files. Rename the
 folder with a "." at the beginning of its name.</p>
</note>

<section id="show-hidden">
 <title>Show all hidden files</title>
  <p>If you want to see all hidden files in a folder, go to that folder and
 either click <guiseq><gui>View</gui><gui>Show Hidden Files</gui></guiseq> or
 press <keyseq><key>Ctrl</key><key>H</key></keyseq>. All hidden files will be
 shown along with the files that were not hidden.</p>

  <p>Some hidden files will have a "." at the beginning of their name. Others
 might have a "~" at the end of their name instead (see <link xref="files-tilde"/>).</p>

  <p>To hide these files again, either click
 <guiseq><gui>View</gui><gui>Show Hidden Files</gui></guiseq> or press
 <keyseq><key>Ctrl</key><key>H</key></keyseq> again.</p>

  <p>Hidden files will only be shown in the current window, until you turn off
 the option for that window. To show hidden files in all file manager windows,
 see <link xref="nautilus-views"/>.</p>

</section>

<section id="unhide">
 <title>Unhide a file</title>
  <p>To unhide a file, go to the folder containing the hidden file and click
 <guiseq><gui>View</gui><gui>Show Hidden Files</gui></guiseq>. Then, find the
 hidden file and rename it so that it doesn't have a "." in front of its name.</p>

  <p>For example, to unhide a file called <file>.example.txt</file>, you should
 rename it to <file>example.txt</file>.</p>

  <p>Once you have renamed the file, you can either click
 <guiseq><gui>View</gui><gui>Show Hidden Files</gui></guiseq> or press
 <keyseq><key>Ctrl</key><key>H</key></keyseq> to hide any other hidden files
 again.</p>

</section>

</page>
