Make a file invisible, so you can't see it in the file manager.
Phil Bull
philbull@gmail.com
Rodolfo Ribeiro Gomes
rodolforg@gmail.com 2011

# Hide a file

You can hide files by renaming them with a . 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.

To hide a file, rename it with a "." at the beginning of its name. For example, to hide a file example.txt, you should rename it to .example.txt.

You can hide folders in the same way that you can hide files. Rename the folder with a "." at the beginning of its name.

# Show all hidden files

If you want to see all hidden files in a folder, go to that folder and either click View Show Hidden Files or press Ctrl H. All hidden files will be shown along with the files that were not hidden.

Some hidden files will have a "." at the beginning of their name. Others might have a "~" at the end of their name instead (see ).

To hide these files again, either click View Show Hidden Files or press Ctrl H again.

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 .

# Unhide a file

To unhide a file, go to the folder containing the hidden file and click View Show Hidden Files. Then, find the hidden file and rename it so that it doesn't have a "." in front of its name.

For example, to unhide a file called .example.txt, you should rename it to example.txt.

Once you have renamed the file, you can either click View Show Hidden Files or press Ctrl H to hide any other hidden files again.