How to hide files and folders in Windows and macOS

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

If you don't want to share confidential information with colleagues or family members, here are some ways to hide it.

Windows

Built-in tool

This is the easiest way, and the necessary tools are already built into Windows. The order of the actions performed is no different in either Windows 7 or Windows 10:

• Create the folder (or file) you want to hide.
• Right-click on the created folder and select Properties from the context menu.
• In the opened folder properties window, check the "Hidden" box.
• Choose whether the system should hide all subfolders and files, or just hide the folder containing them. Basically, you only need to hide the folder.
• Click OK.

Done, now the folder is hidden. But it can still be visible if the display of hidden files is enabled on your computer. To disable this feature, do the following:

• Open the Start menu and start typing the phrase "Show hidden files and folders."
• Open the found settings.
• In the options window that appears, go to the "View" tab, scroll down the list of options and find the "Hidden files and folders" section. Check the box "Do not show hidden files, folders and drives". Click OK.

Now hidden files and folders will not appear in Explorer and search results. Note that third-party file managers will still see your folder.

A more cunning way

To hide something, you need to place it in plain sight. Guided by this ancient wisdom, let's try to hide important data in some beautiful picture.

This trick is possible thanks to the peculiarities of the JPEG files. Image viewers start analyzing JPEG files from the beginning, ignoring the data written at the end of the file. Archivers, on the other hand, recognize the beginning of archives by special signatures that can be located anywhere in the file.

Simply put, you can combine an image file and an archive so that the information in the archive will be hidden in the image file. An outsider opening your file in an image viewer will only see the picture. You can open the picture with the archiver and see the hidden data in it.

It's pretty simple to do this:

• Archive the data to be hidden in ZIP or RAR format.
• Place the archive and the picture in which you want to hide it in the same folder on the C drive (so that the path to the folder is C: / your_folder).
• Hold Win + R, type cmd and press Enter.

• In the command line that opens, enter

  cd C: / your_folder

• to navigate to the created folder.

• Then type

  copy / b your_image.jpg + your_archive.rar new_image.jpg

• .

Ready. The command line will create a new_image-j.webp

This method can also be used to transfer any data to your interlocutors on forums or chats, where it is forbidden to exchange any files other than pictures.

macOS

You will have to create hidden files in macOS through the command line, because honest users of Apple products have nothing to hide, and the hidden attribute is primarily intended for system files. But it's still very simple.

• Create the folder (or file) you want to hide.
• Open "Terminal".

• Enter the command

  chflags hidden

• , but don't press Enter.
• Drag your folder to the Terminal window.
• Now hit Enter.

Your folder will become invisible. To open it, you have to enter the path to it through Finder → "Go" → "Go to folder".

You can also enable the display of hidden folders by entering the command in the terminal

defaults write com.apple. Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES

… After that, restart Finder via Apple → Force Quit.

Command

defaults write com.apple. Finder AppleShowAllFiles NO

will hide files and folders again.