Hidden files show up in Nautilus recent files

Question

I'm using Ubuntu 13.10 and have a hidden folder. Using the privacy app in the system settings I have excluded this folder from the dash this works well enough although I would prefer to be able to exclude all hidden files/folders from the dash rather than excluding based on specific folders.

The problem though is that files in this hidden folder still show up in Nautilus' recent files. I don't really want to disable that feature altogether but can I prevent it showing hidden files only? (I would have assumed that should be default behaviour?)

Answer 1

Nautilus has a special feature for this. Create a file with name .hidden in a directory and put a list of the files you want to hide in this file.

You can use a command like this to put them in that file:

cd ~/Downloads/
touch .hidden
ls . -1 * | sudo tee -a ~/.hidden

would put all files in the Downloads directory in the file .hidden and all files will disappear from view. Adjust it to your liking ;)

1 caveat: I have not tested this with the recent files but I would consider it a bug if it did not work like this ;)

Answer 2

I do not know how you hid them, but there is another way. Simply edit the name and put a "." in front of it. For example, if the name is "test.txt", then rename it to ".text.txt". Same thing for folder. If it is still there, press ctrl-h.

Note: Hiding Files is just a convient way of not displaying files that are only for internal purposes. They are easy to find. If you want to secure your files, see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EncryptedHome.

Answer 3

It seems that there is no management mechanism for Nautilus' recent files. activity-log-manager only works for Dash.