The Files file manager gives you the ability to hide and unhide files at your discretion. When a file is hidden, it is not displayed by the file manager, but it is still there in its folder.
To hide a file, rename it with a . at the beginning of its name. For example, to hide a file named example.txt, you should rename it to .example.txt.
You can hide folders in the same way that you can hide files. Hide a folder by placing a . at the beginning of the folder’s name.
To unhide a file, go to the folder containing the hidden file and click the view options button in the toolbar and pick Show Hidden Files. Then, find the hidden file and rename it so that it does not have a . in front of its name. For example, to unhide a file called .example.txt, you should rename it to example.txt.
Once you have renamed the file, you can either click the view options button in the toolbar and pick Show Hidden Files, or press Ctrl+H to hide any other hidden files again.
By default, you will only see hidden files in the file manager until you close the file manager. To change this setting so that the file manager will always show hidden files, see Views preferences in Files.
Most hidden files will have a . at the beginning of their name, but others might have a ~ at the end of their name instead. These files are backup files. See What is a file with a ~ at the end of its name? for more information.
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