Questions tagged [hidden-files]

also refereed to as dot-files and/or [.]files

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175 votes
11 answers
1.5m views

Where is .bashrc?

I feel stupid asking, but I can't seem to find the answer to this anywhere. I'm trying to follow these instructions to edit my bash prompt, but there is no .bashrc in either my user directory (~/....
JeanSibelius's user avatar
  • 3,602
156 votes
6 answers
396k views

How to show hidden folders in File Manager (Nautilus) on Ubuntu?

How do you show a hidden folder (whose name starts with .) in File Manager a.k.a. Nautilus on Ubuntu? I am somewhat new to Ubuntu and can't seem to find the "view" menu.
Strato1's user avatar
  • 2,120
94 votes
6 answers
110k views

what is a .fuse_hidden file and why do they exist?

I have a folder where I transfer home videos from a camcorder to. I find two files in this folder that are not videos... .fuse_hidden0000002c00000001 .fuse_hidden0000002600000002 What are these ...
barrypicker's user avatar
  • 1,213
63 votes
5 answers
91k views

rsync exclude hidden files doesnt work!

I’ve searched all over the internet and everybody suggests the same thing - that adding --exclude=´.*´ should exclude hidden files and folders from an rsync. It doesn’t. I´ve also tried adding a ...
user289455's user avatar
55 votes
6 answers
17k views

How can I hide directories or files without changing their names?

The OCD in me wants directories I do not like the name of to be hidden since I do not interact with them directly. How can I hide directories without using the dot notation?
myusuf3's user avatar
  • 34.2k
48 votes
5 answers
81k views

What are dot-files?

I am having a hard time grasping what dot-files are or what they are for. Are they directories? How do I navigate to them?
RafLance's user avatar
  • 687
35 votes
10 answers
9k views

Will ls always list the files that rm will remove?

Something I feel I ought to know for sure: if I ls <something>, will rm <something> remove exactly the same files that ls displayed? Are there any circumstances where rm could remove files ...
B.Tanner's user avatar
  • 2,636
33 votes
3 answers
15k views

"mv file" and now it's missing

In a terminal window, I typed: mv filename ..\.. [Note the wrong slash.] Now I can't find it. Gone. I ran some searches and looked through recoverable deleted files. Nothing. Poof. Serves me ...
John's user avatar
  • 577
32 votes
4 answers
29k views

How to show hidden files in Nautilus 3.20.3 Ubuntu 16.10?

How to show hidden files in Nautilus 3.20.3 Ubuntu 16.10?
user avatar
30 votes
4 answers
20k views

Open file dialog defaults to showing hidden files

My open file dialog is defaulting to showing hidden files, I have to press Ctrl-H to get to the files I want, but this is not saved across instances of the dialog. I can't find a settings panel to ...
Erik Youngren's user avatar
28 votes
3 answers
185k views

How to show (or hide) a hidden file

I wanted to add classpath to my JDK. While searching a way to do it I noticed everyone open .profile file using terminal. But when I want to open and edit it with a text editor I couldn't see that ...
samsri's user avatar
  • 393
19 votes
4 answers
4k views

How to hide files with a specific extension

I have set of temp files created in my folder with .bak extensions. How can I make them hide by default in Ubuntu? I tried adding a .hidden file with *.bak as entry in the file, but that is not ...
james's user avatar
  • 191
18 votes
3 answers
10k views

How to hide files and folders in Nautilus?

I want to hide, most of the folders in root (/) using Nautilus. Probably the only folders in / I want shown are /home and /tmp. In addition to hiding folders, I also want to hide two files: initrd....
blade19899's user avatar
  • 26.7k
17 votes
1 answer
6k views

How to make bash stop tab autocompleting hidden directories

Most of the time, I don't need autocompletes for my hidden directories. In fact, that's the point of them being hidden! However, annoyingly, bash takes these directories into account when ...
Kristopher Micinski's user avatar
17 votes
1 answer
5k views

Hidden files are shown in Dash

I have several hidden files in a folder that are private and need to remain private. I do not mind people seeing what I do on my system but after I open one of these files I can find them through ...
Rinzwind's user avatar
  • 299k
15 votes
3 answers
6k views

How to hide (in Thunar and Nautilus) a directory without putting a dot in its name?

Usually Linux programs store user's settings in ~/.* directories. But unfortunately some developers (of some applications I need) do not follow this rule and don't start their settings storage folders ...
Ivan's user avatar
  • 57k
12 votes
3 answers
11k views

What is ~/.face (binary)?

I just noticed this file, .face, in my home directory: -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 14747 2012-01-07 01:35 .face Never seen it or heard of it before, and google doesn't seem to know either. ...
bgibson's user avatar
  • 4,787
9 votes
5 answers
29k views

What does the period (.) mean at the start of a filename in a terminal command?

In chmod -R 421 .gimp, what does the period mean directly preceding the g in gimp? Is that similar to the * wildcard?
stackinator's user avatar
  • 1,941
9 votes
1 answer
6k views

How to synchronize hidden (dot) files in owncloud/nextcloud

When using ownCloud client for linux my hidden files are not synchronized, and appear under Activity > Not Synced with a message stating: File is ignored because it's hidden
Javier Arias's user avatar
8 votes
3 answers
26k views

What is a dot only named folder? [duplicate]

I know what dot files or folders are, but there is a specific dot named folder (the name is just a dot) in every directories. What are they used for? For example here is a part of my "bin" folder. ...
ziggurat's user avatar
  • 119
8 votes
2 answers
57k views

chown -R user:user .* changes permissions backwards: is this the correct behaviour?

I got into a lot of trouble when changing the permission of a folder myfolder residing in /. I issued the command sudo chown -R luca:luca /myfolder/.* My intention was to change ownership of all the ...
lucacerone's user avatar
  • 1,690
7 votes
3 answers
7k views

How to make folders like "System Volume Information" or "RECYCLER" hidden, just like it is on windows?

I have this external hard drive, and I used it in windows, now that I use it on Ubuntu, and it is kind of annoying to see files like System Volume Information, so how can I make it hidden? Or how can ...
AmirRazoR's user avatar
  • 3,257
7 votes
3 answers
3k views

Make multiple files hidden?

I have a group of files I want hidden to avoid clutter. Is there a command that can simply make multiple files hidden? Is there an application? Is there a single command that will make the files I've ...
jaorizabal's user avatar
  • 3,748
6 votes
4 answers
48k views

Show hidden .htaccess files by default

I was wondering if there is some method to display .htaccess files by default in every folder i create it. Is it possible to exclude .htaccess files from the hidden files? Maybe from the terminal
vitto's user avatar
  • 443
6 votes
3 answers
10k views

How do I remove hidden backup files?

I have files ending in ~ in my home directory, and I want to delete them. How do I do that? How do I prevent this backup functionality?
Flair's user avatar
  • 517
5 votes
2 answers
34k views

Hide and unhide folders

is there any way to unhide folders other than removing the "." in fornt of it. becasue i have minecraft and the folder which you install mods to is called ".minecraft" and its in /home/usr but i want ...
MegaEverything's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
19k views

How to find a hidden file?

Somewhere on my 10T NAS devise is a file named exactly .avi. I have tried find, locate and ls. All return either all files ending with extension .avi or nothing at all. How can I find it explicitly?...
user215199's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
3k views

Hidden files wont stay hidden in Ubuntu Gnome

Whenever I open the Home folder, all the hidden files are displayed along with unhidden files. I hit Ctrl+H and they disappear, but they are visible again when I open Home again. I've tried de-...
Brad L's user avatar
  • 51
5 votes
1 answer
7k views

How do I view files that start with a period? [duplicate]

I have Ubuntu 15.04 and for whatever reason, folders that start with a "." won't display in the file explorer. Is there a way to display these folders? Example: my app doomseeker has a folder in home ...
Bonzai Warrior's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
16k views

How do I use locate to find hidden files in Terminal? [duplicate]

I am trying to find a hidden file that I know the name, but no the location of. The name is "message", and I have tried sudo locate *message*, but I have not found it. I have too much output, plus I ...
Gavin Morton's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
13k views

Any way to use Visual Studio Code editor instead of nano/vim/emacs to edit files?

I'm having an issue where I can only edit .bashrc or .zshrc files with the nano command. When I input code .bashrc it just opens up an empty .bashrc file. With nano it works within the shell and it ...
RE5494569's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
10k views

changing paths for pip

I have some problems with pip, and found a solution here: it is suggested to change a line in any of these files: ~/.pypirc or $PIP_INDEX_URL or pip.conf Problem is, I can't find any of these ...
Edon's user avatar
  • 211
5 votes
2 answers
4k views

How to filter out hidden files and directories in 'find'?

I would like to list all the non-hidden files and directories in my path. This means that files beginning with . should be excluded from the result, along with files whose path contains a hidden ...
Adam Matan's user avatar
  • 12.5k
5 votes
2 answers
1k views

How to hide files without renaming them in Ubuntu 18 Nautilus?

I have searched a lot about that & the only way I found is to create a file named .hidden & put the file names I want to hide in separated by a break. This method seems to be not working for ...
n0krashy's user avatar
  • 109
5 votes
1 answer
3k views

Hide desktop.ini and Thumbs.db files

I have Ubuntu and Windows 7 on my computer. Now I have a problem, I want to hide the desktop.ini and Thumbs.db files Windows automaticly creates. I can't rename all files to .desktop.ini and .Thumbs....
Sk8er's user avatar
  • 3,919
5 votes
1 answer
2k views

Does Deja Dup save hidden folders?

I'm scheduling my backups with Deja Dup and I'd like to know if hidden folders in the home directory, such as .thunderbird, will be included in my backups? My question comes from the fact that my ...
Joe's user avatar
  • 151
5 votes
0 answers
4k views

Can cd into folder but I can't see it with ls or ls -a?

I've a shared partition between Windows and Ubuntu, achieved through VMWare's shared folders, and when I moved a folder into this shared folder Ubuntu couldn't see it. Ubuntu still can't see it, but ...
calben's user avatar
  • 173
4 votes
3 answers
20k views

Execute commands on hidden files

I run command to search for phrase in all files: cat *.* | grep blabla It works fine but I got problem with hidden files and directories. Command simply not deals with them. Ho to solve this problem?...
vico's user avatar
  • 4,527
4 votes
2 answers
11k views

How can I stop the automatic creation of ~/.cache/motd.legal-displayed file?

In every home-directory on my Ubuntu Server is a .cache folder containing an empty file motd.legal-displayed. Is there a way to stop creating these .cache folders?
ph3nx's user avatar
  • 143
4 votes
1 answer
9k views

Delete all hidden files recursively in current directory [duplicate]

I have a directory which contains hidden files and by that I mean, not just the files whose name starts with . but also the files whose name contains ~ character at the end like somefile.txt~. I want ...
Vicky Dev's user avatar
  • 433
4 votes
0 answers
710 views

Allow snap version of Firefox to access hidden folders

SageMath uses a folder of the form $HOME/.sage/temp/$HOSTNAME/<random four digit name> to hold html files generated by a plotting routine and calls the default browser to display them. I want ...
Richard Quint's user avatar
4 votes
3 answers
846 views

Hidden files show up in Nautilus recent files

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 ...
db579's user avatar
  • 454
4 votes
0 answers
135 views

What are the '~' files created when I edit something and can I delete them? [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: Prevent gedit from creating files with the '~' suffix I've noticed that every time i edit or in anyway modify a .txt, .php, .html, .doc etc file, after I save it, an ...
upapilot's user avatar
  • 2,916
3 votes
2 answers
383 views

Manipulating hidden files

How can I copy all hidden files/directories in the home directory into a separate directory from command line ? I wasn't able to find a lot of material concerning usage of hidden files .
user43389's user avatar
  • 643
3 votes
1 answer
1k views

Accidentally made a file disappear using mv. Where should I look for it?

I had a file in which I had some credentials; and for some reason, it's hidden now. I can see on my desktop that there are two folders with . and .. name. Where did they come from? My file was sample....
metalhead's user avatar
  • 184
3 votes
3 answers
6k views

Is It Safe to Delete My External HDD's Files/Folders That Are Hidden in Windows?

Is it safe to delete the Windows files and folders without having ANY repercussions? I do plan on using the external drive on Windows based computers here and there, but will use it on my Ubuntu based ...
Junior Cortez's user avatar
3 votes
3 answers
2k views

How can I exclude . and .. when listing hidden items? [duplicate]

ls -d .* lists only hidden "items" (files & directories). (I think) technically it lists every item beginning with ., which includes the current . and above .. directories. I also know that ls -A ...
jonnybolton16's user avatar
3 votes
2 answers
1k views

Is it possible to permanently show hidden files?

Whenever I restart the OS or even after it locks, files are hidden again. I have selected to show hidden files numerous times but it always reverts back. I really have no desire to hide files and I ...
Jeremy's user avatar
  • 258
3 votes
1 answer
1k views

How can I make Nautilus automatically show hidden files? [duplicate]

I know I can just hit CTRL+H to hide the hidden files, but how do I make them visible by default? I use Ubuntu 16.04.
Curtice Gough's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
2k views

Ubuntu 16.10 - deleted files don't go to trash and keep taking space

The trash seems to be empty, but the partition's trash folder (.Trash-1000) shows the deleted files and they keep taking up space. Is this a bug in the new version (16.10) released today? Everything ...
Kobi T's user avatar
  • 1,949