Hidden files and directories

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There are very few or no other articles that link to this one.
Please help introduce links in articles on related topics. After links have been created, remove this message.
This article has been tagged since September 2006.

A hidden directory or hidden file on a computer is a directory (folder) or a file that is, by default, not shown to the user. Hidden directories are most often used to hide important operating system (OS)-related files essential for the running of an OS.

[edit] Viewing Hidden Directories

If you are using Mac OS X, then you can enable the Finder (desktop application) to display hidden files by opening the application 'Terminal' which should be pre-installed in the Utillties folder of your Application folder. In Terminal, type 'defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE' the press return, then type 'killall Finder' and press return then, if you want, type 'killall Terminal'.

If you are using Windows, open up a new Explorer window, such as My Documents, and in the menu bar, click on 'Tools' then 'Folder Options...'. Then, click on the 'View' tab and in the list should be the option to 'Show hidden files and folder'. Check it and click on 'OK' or 'Apply'.

In iPodLinux you can enable the viewing of hidden files by going into 'Setting', then scroling down to 'Show Hidden Files' and enable it.

It may be possible to view hidden files in other programs.

[edit] Unix and Unix-like

In Unix-like operating systems hidden files' and directories' name is prepended with dot (e.g. /home/user/.config). Showing or hiding this directories is determined by file manager (e.g. mc shows them by dafault).