Questions tagged [hidden-files]

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

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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?
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 ...
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 ...
1 vote
2 answers
461 views

What does it mean when there is a path like /dir/dir/program.attribute?

I want to understand how can there be what appears to be "hidden" files that exist. Are they in fact hidden? Or are they attributes of a program? How does one access all the .files?
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?
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.
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 (~/....
0 votes
1 answer
966 views

show hidden files doesn't work on nautilus, ubuntu 22.04

when I enter sudo nautilus on the terminal, enter any of my partitions and select show hidden files from the drop menu on the top right it doesn't select it and doesn't work.
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 ...
1 vote
1 answer
59 views

Find commands include files not in directory

there are only three files/subdirectories in my directory root@acd95b24dde6:~# ls -l total 1048 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1067355 Sep 6 12:57 apollo13.txt -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6 Sep 12 22:02 out....
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....
2 votes
1 answer
309 views

Show hidden folder in save dialog

I would like to extract some .ttf files into my ~/.local/share/fonts folder directly from the save dialog. However, the hidden files are not shown in the dialog. Is there a way to manually enter a ...
0 votes
0 answers
80 views

How to hide .directory on Desktop?

After upgrading to Ubuntu 20, I noticed there's now a .directory file on my Desktop with the content: [Desktop Entry] Encoding=UTF-8 Icon=user-desktop Type=Directory As I hate clutter, I deleted it. ...
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 ...
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 ...
2 votes
2 answers
3k views

In Ubuntu 21.10, Firefox and Chromium cannot open file in hidden directory

In Ubuntu 21.10, Firefox 93.0 can't open a file in a hidden directory like /home/alba/.toto/0000000d.html. (Whatever the name and content of the HTML file, you can use an empty file.) Nor does ...
0 votes
0 answers
114 views

How to really hide a folder / file?

I have a folder which I want to hide, but not by prepending a dot, because then you just need to enable "View hidden folders" in the file manager. I don't want that - I want it to be REALLY ...
2 votes
0 answers
311 views

Files and folders are partially not displayed in Nautilus

I am facing a problem and I couldn't find any related post for that. I am regularly using an USB flash drive to move files from a Windows computer to my laptop which runs Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. The ...
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 ...
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 ...
0 votes
2 answers
1k views

I want to hide my files from windows 10 on Ubuntu 21

I dual boot Ubuntu 21 and windows 10, I don't want the systems to read or recognize each other in any way. My ubuntu partittion is on a external hard drive, my windows 10 partition is on the ssd in my ...
1 vote
1 answer
4k views

mono_crash hidden files in home directory

I have noticed that there are some hidden files in my home directory (Ubuntu 20.04) with names like 'mono_crash.d4716fb0.0.json' and 'mono_crash.mem.4398.1.blob' There was 2 of the json files and 3 of ...
0 votes
2 answers
252 views

backup strategy for libreoffice files in ~/.config/libreoffice/4/user/backup directory

In backing up my home directory, I find I have just shy of 30,000 files of the form filename.odb_counter.odb my guess is these are the files used to recover corrupted files when they occur. I don't ...
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 ...
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?
0 votes
1 answer
185 views

Hide files and folders from specific apps only

I want to make a folder invisible to just one specific application. Is there any way to do that? I want the folder to be visible to everything else on the system, just not the one specific application....
1 vote
2 answers
1k views

Disk Image Mounter does not show hidden files/folders when it opens an ISO file

I archived a lot of files and folders into a .img file... it is a disk image I made using dd and rsync. I then made an .iso file from the .img file (using ImgBurn in Windows 10). Using Caja file ...
1 vote
1 answer
67 views

dotfile failed to read file

When I create a file without a dot (hidden) and use gh, (Github cli), to create a gist, it works. But when I change it to a hidden file it fails to read a file. # I can create a gist with a normal ...
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 ...
2 votes
1 answer
251 views

How to hide files on desktop in Nautilus but keep them visible on the desktop screen?

I have some files on my desktop that I want to hide in Nautilus. I tried adding a dot at the beginning of the filename and using a .hidden file. In both cases, the file is no longer shown in Nautilus, ...
1 vote
0 answers
618 views

Can't browse & access hidden Files and Folders with chromium

One HTML page of mine needs to access images that are stored in a hidden folder .local/ in order to render them and generate PDFs. However when I try to access any files stored in an hidden folder I ...
1 vote
2 answers
15k views

Folders not visible in mounted drive but space is occupied

I have an external hard drive which shows that the drive has 48GB of data. But the folders that are visible are only totaling to ~8GB. I tried to the 'show hidden files' but nothing extra is visible. ...
0 votes
4 answers
586 views

How to specify which hidden files should remain hidden and choose which files are to be seen?

For example, I have two folders .history and .trash they both are from the same "tribe" but I never need to use the .history folder so it is useless to keep it in the explorer while .trash ...
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. ...
1 vote
1 answer
432 views

Discord allow uploading from hidden directories

I've found in my discord (installed from snap) that it cannot access hidden folders (ex. ~/.minecraft). Is there a way to give discord permissions to upload files from there?
1 vote
1 answer
674 views

Freeing space from deleted files

I had some files deleted that I tried to recover with TestDisk. Because I was in panic, I selected to create an image (.dd file) in the /home directory. The HDD was quickly full, so I terminated the ...
1 vote
3 answers
767 views

How do I get a folder size in nautilus to include hidden files (dotfiles)?

In Ubuntu (14.04) in the nautilus window (the file explorer) I can right-click on a folder and select Properties to see its size. However, this size does not include hidden files. (dotfiles) Is ...
1 vote
2 answers
11k views

How to sudo chmod -R 777 * including hidden files?

Basically what I want to do is all in the title. If I want to grant read, write and execute permissions for everybody in a folder then I usually do: sudo chmod -R 777 * How can I extend this command ...
0 votes
1 answer
2k views

I can't find .local file [duplicate]

I can't find .local in home file Inside local file: Inside home file:
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....
2 votes
0 answers
1k views

How to remove fuse_hidden file when the running process can't be found?

I have seen this issue in other threads but couldn't find a solution that worked for me. So my fuse_hidden file (49GB) is in a trash directory on a protable hard-drive. I assume it stems from a unzip ...
0 votes
0 answers
1k views

Dissappeared files from external disk, Ubuntu 20.04

My files from an external disk disappeared suddenly. I am using Ubuntu 20.04 and I am sure that I didn't delete them! One the external disk I can see some files, but some files I can't see. My ...
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 ...
3 votes
0 answers
159 views

Explain difference in non-hidden file count when using Nautilus vs. using other tools such as tree and how to independently calculate former count?

I recently have been backing up my files from a laptop and as part of that have opted to move a folder that at first seemed to be of size 107.6 GB from one hard drive to another. As I was copying, I ...
0 votes
1 answer
39 views

Show always one specific hidden file inside a specific folder

I am creating a backup of .bashrc. I make a copy of it inside my backup folder. Let's say the folder is ~/backup previously I always created a .hidden file and put the name of files I want to hide. ...
-2 votes
1 answer
116 views

How can I see hidden folders in Nautilus? [duplicate]

Can someone please tell me how I can display hidden folders with Nautilus?
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 ...
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 ...
0 votes
2 answers
91 views

If I run an application, ~/.application is created. Is it safe to delete?

How do I stop it for creating such folders... eg..if I open the application say - Stellarium, then in the home - a folder ".Stellarium" gets created This was not being created before...What can do to ...
0 votes
1 answer
1k views

How do I hide unnecessary .directories in my home directory? [duplicate]

I found some .files in my home directory now. They are .local, .mozilla, .java, .Skype, .adobe and many more. They make my home directory messy. How to hide these files? They were not present before.