There is another method that you can try to hide a folder by redirecting it to Control Panel. You essentially create two batch files, one that locks the folder and one that unlocks it. If the folder is locked, opening it will take you to Control Panel. No matter what kind of content you store on your computer, you will always find reasons to hide certain files and folders. Maybe you have important documents and videos that you want to keep under lock and key, or you just want to prevent users from accidentally deleting certain files when you share your PC with other people. At the command prompt, type the following command. Replace the path and file name with the path and name of the file that you want to hide. There you go. Now you know how to show or hide folders and files in Windows 10.

If you want to declutter further, you can follow our tutorials to remove built-in Windows apps and customize the Start menu. If you are trying to hide a folder that contains files and subfolders that you also want to keep hidden, you should also follow these steps. Linux hides files and folders that have a period at the beginning of their name. To hide a file or folder, simply rename it and put a period at the beginning of the name. Let`s say you have a folder named Secrets that you want to hide. They would rename it to. Secrets, with the dot in the foreground. File managers and other utilities hide it by default. If you open the folder in File Explorer that contains the hidden file or folder, it does not appear.

Even if you check > show/hide and check the hidden items box, the hidden file or folder will not be displayed. This trick is anything but foolproof. It is trivial to enable the “Show hidden files” option and find a hidden file. Operating systems hide a lot of system files by default – just to eliminate them. Which method do you prefer to hide files and folders on Windows 10? Let us know in the comments below. If you accidentally hid the wrong folder or need to access it again, you can view hidden files in Windows Explorer with this simple toggle: Click the View tab on your File Explorer ribbon, and then look for the Show/Hide section. Deselect Hidden Items. Your hidden folders and files will then be displayed with a slightly grayed out icon.

You can also use the command prompt to hide files and folders on your computer. Toggle the above command with the path to your parent folder and press Enter. Then run the attrib -h command to display the file or folder of your choice: In this Windows 10 guide, we will walk you through the simple steps to hide a file and folder on your computer. You will also learn the steps to access these hidden items when needed. If you do not want to modify the registry, you can use the Disk Management utility to hide an entire drive. This utility will show you all the internal and external drives connected to your computer. Locate the drive letter that you want to hide in the following table. Type the number associated with this drive letter in the NoDrives Value value box in the registry. In our example, I typed 64 to hide my drive G:. Macs also hide files and folders that begin with a character. There is also a special “hidden” attribute that the seeker obeys.

Hiding a file or folder is a bit more difficult on a Mac. Try renaming a file or folder so that it starts with a period and the Finder says, “These names are for the system only.” There`s also no way to quickly switch the hidden attribute in the Finder`s GUI. In the Command Prompt window, navigate to the parent directory of the file or folder that you want to view. In our case, we want to display a folder called “Personal Files”, which is located in our OneDrive folder “Documents”: To hide files, run the following commands in a terminal window: To view the file or folder, you can run the same command, except this time you use “-” instead of the “+” signs. A hidden folder in Windows 10 has two options: you can hide only the root directory or you can also hide its subfolders and files. You may be wondering what is the point of deleting the home folder from File Explorer anyway.