How to hide files and folders in Nautilus?

Tested under Nautilus 3.4.2 on Ubuntu 12.04/12.10 (but works in almost all scenarios)

Open gnome-terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T).

Type ls -1 /.

Copy the name(s) of the folder(s) you want hidden.

Press Alt+F2, then type in gedit.

Paste all the names you want hidden like so:

^{Image excerpted from Another Way to Hide Files Folders in Ubuntu by Meilin}

Save the file (Ctrl+S) in the directory / with the name .hidden (no asterisk, as seen in the image above).

Refresh the page, and they are gone.

^{Image from How to hide files and folders - EuroBytes}

If you want them unhidden later...

To unhide the folders, you can either:

• remove there names from the .hidden file, or
• just press Ctrl+H to view all hidden files and folders.

Reference:

• Meilin, "Another Way to Hide Files Folders in Ubuntu," Ubuntu Sharing (ubuntuguide.net).
• How to hide files and folders - EuroBytes

I doubt you can achieve this easily, this is either all or nothing in the unix model, and there is no permission for "seeing content of directory". Once you have enough access to read a directory, then you can read everything ( ie, the list of folder/files )

chmod o-r / could work for hiding all directories, but I do not recommend to do it without testing first on a vm, and fully understanding what you do.

Using a custom kernel module, you could hide folders, but that's rather complex and error prone.

This is an extension to @blade19899's answer

Motivation

Putting file names in .hidden file will hide them but nautilus only checks for exact matches. In some scenarios we want to hide files by pattern, not by exact names—for example I don't like to see latex aux files.

Workaround

My workaround is to split the .hidden in two sections separated by a line of at least 5 equal signs (i.e. =====). The patterns should be placed before this separator. Then, an script (see below) completes the file by adding exact filenames after the separator.

In practice, you need to run this script manually to update the file with new matches. Maybe adding this file as a FilemanagerActions would be a good idea.

Script

Run with no arguments:

import glob
from pathspec import PathSpec


def main():
    patterns = find_patterns('.hidden')
    files = ls()
    matches = find_matches(patterns, files)
    update_dothidden(patterns, matches)


def find_patterns(filepath):
    patterns = []
    with open(filepath) as f:
        lines = f.readlines()
    for line in lines:
        if line[0:5] == '=====':
            break
        patterns.append(line)
    return patterns


def ls():
    return glob.iglob('**/**', recursive=True)


def find_matches(patterns, files):
    path_spec = PathSpec.from_lines('gitwildmatch', patterns)
    return filter(path_spec.match_file, files)


def update_dothidden(patterns, matches):
    with open('.hidden', 'w') as f:
        for pattern in patterns:
            f.write(pattern)
        f.write('======================\n\n')
        for match in matches:
            f.write(match + '\n')
        f.write("\n# For usage, see https://github.com/m2-farzan/dothidden-patterns")


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

Latest version of the script: https://github.com/m2-farzan/dothidden-patterns/blob/main/refresh_dothidden.py

Example

Put this into .hidden file:

*.aux
*.bbl
*.blg
*.log
*.synctex.gz

Execute:

~/my_scripts/refresh_dothidden.py

Updated .hidden file:

*.aux
*.bbl
*.blg
*.log
*.synctex.gz
======================

dstar_main.aux
main.aux
main.bbl
main.blg
main.log
main.synctex.gz
mrpp_central.aux
tikzhead.aux