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advice1010

Member

Registered: 2023-02-19

Posts: 105

Preventing specific folders and files from being visible

There certain folders and files that are not desired to be seen all the time.  Often these items clutter up folders and are really just in the way.  I was wondering if anyone can provide the best way to preventing them from being visible.
I am saying it this way because I feel that renaming some of these items with dots in front of them to make them hidden would cause issues, so I just want them to not be visible.  I have seen certain file managers allow for this in settings.
I would say this question mainly pertains to Thunar, but I would also like these items to not be shown in file pickers as well if possible.

Many of these items I imagine will have different methods of handling them so I will provide a list of some that I have come across.  In doing some research I will provide some of the solutions I have seen if anyone can verify if they are a good idea / cause any issues

HOME BASED ITEMS
lost+found
This is strange, sometimes I have this as a hidden folder in my "home" folder (not username folder) and sometimes it is not hidden.  I have read that it is not a good idea to delete this and even if you did it will be regenerated.
Does anyone know why sometimes this is hidden (requires Ctrl+H in Thunar) and sometimes it is forced to be seen?
Does anyone know of any ways to prevent from being visible?

Desktop
Public
Templates
These I saw that you can edit a text file to change PATH VARIABLES so that all programs know to use them.
Is this okay to do?  Move these folders to other locations or maybe add dots to them and then just edit text file to link to the new names?

WINDOWS BASED ITEMS
If using a data drive that is NTFS / used in Windows you end up seeing a bunch of folders that are hidden to WIndows but not to Linux.

Here are some I have seen
$RECYCLING.BIN
MSOCache
System Volume Information

Cannot remember name of it right now but there was also a file that showed up that was hidden in Windows.
Cannot rename these because then would not work in Windows, so would need a way to prevent from being visible in Linux.

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Again looking for solutions to make these folders not visible in Thunar or File Pickers if possible.

I have seen a couple sites mention that you can create a hidden file in your HOME directory called ".hidden" and add the paths for folders and files in it.  Will this work / is this safe to use on any of the items above?  Is this making them just not visible or does it actually hide them same as if you use dot in front of names?

Thank you for any information shared

I have seen a couple of solutions

Last edited by advice1010 (2024-08-05 00:09:40)

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,499

Re: Preventing specific folders and files from being visible

I have seen a couple sites mention that you can create a hidden file in your HOME directory called ".hidden" and add the paths for folders and files in it.  Will this work / is this safe to use on any of the items above?  Is this making them just not visible or does it actually hide them same as if you use dot in front of names?

Yes this will work. It's "safe" in that it won't do anything nasty to your system - you just won't see those files with any program that use the Gio/GVFS.

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advice1010

Member

Registered: 2023-02-19

Posts: 105

Re: Preventing specific folders and files from being visible

@ToZ
Thank you for your response.
Still working on this, but just in case it takes me some time to figure a couple things out, just wanted to thank you for your help.
Okay so I think I am going to go with the .hidden file method mentioned.
I will report back if I discover anything.