Make a file invisible, so you can't see it in the file manager.
Phil Bull
philbull@gmail.com
Michael Hill
mdhillca@gmail.com
Adam Matoušek
adamatousek@gmail.com 2012

# Hide a file

The GNOME file manager gives you the ability to hide and unhide files at your discretion. When a file is hidden, it isn't displayed by the file manager, but it's still there in its folder.

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

You can hide folders in the same way that you can hide files. Hide a folder by placing a . at the beginning of the folder's name.

# Show all hidden files

If you want to see all hidden files in a folder, go to that folder and either click the down button in the toolbar and pick Show Hidden Files, or press Ctrl H. You will see all hidden files, along with regular files that are not hidden.

To hide these files again, either click the down button in the toolbar and pick Show Hidden Files, or press Ctrl H again.

# Unhide a file

To unhide a file, go to the folder containing the hidden file and click the down button in the toolbar and pick 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 the down button in the toolbar and pick Show Hidden Files, or press Ctrl H to hide any other hidden files again.

By default, you will only see hidden files in the file manager until you close the file manager. To change this setting so that the file manager will always show hidden files, see .

Most hidden files will have a . at the beginning of their name, but others might have a ~ at the end of their name instead. These files are backup files. See for more information.