How to hide a folder on a Mac. How to Hide Files on Mac OS X
The most reliable option for blocking files is, without a doubt, encryption.
Your encrypted file will not be accessible to ordinary users without knowing the password. The same fully applies to account password protected. However, you don’t always want to bother with setting and remembering passwords, especially if the information is not of interest to hackers; it is quite enough to simply hide it from prying eyes. Now we will share with you several effective and quick ways to hide files on computers with .
Using Terminal to hide files and folders
Hiding files using the Terminal is the simplest and most efficient option. Follow these steps step by step:
- To launch the Terminal, the easiest way is to find it in the Spotlight search bar for the word “Terminal” or in the Finder, in the utilities section.
- Enter the command “chflags hidden”, click the space bar and drag the file you want to hide into the open Terminal window, then press Enter. Done, the information is hidden, goes into the Finder and viewing it will be possible only after performing the actions in the Terminal in the reverse order.
To cancel a previously hidden folder or file in the Terminal, enter “chflags nohidden” and a space, then manually follow the entire path to the file or drag the adjacent folder and change its name to avoid typing the entire path.
In the case when you hide a folder with a Russian-language name containing not one, but several words, then immediately after the first word the symbol is entered «\» . So, a folder named “Personal Correspondence” will look in the Terminal as “Personal \ correspondence". And be sure to remember or write down the names of the folders and files that you hide.
Using special programs to hide files
Of course, the proposed option is not perfect and is not entirely simple for some users, so you can also use applications developed specifically for Mac OS X by third-party developers. The Obscurity utility is perfect for solving this goal. , costs 59 rub. To install Obscurity, an image of the downloaded file is mounted, after which it is dragged into the system programs folder.
It is Obscurity that will become the folder where the hidden files. To move any information there, right-click on “Obscurity” and select the line to display content from the list. Your hidden files will be stored here.
When you simply open Obscurity, you won’t be able to find anything there; moreover, even when searching, they won’t be displayed. To be even more reliable, you can give the Obscurity folder some “underground” name or place functioning programs there.
Disk utility to encrypt files and folders
An alternative to hiding folders and files is encryption, which can be done using the Disk Utility that comes with OS X.
To find and open Disk Utility, use the Spotlight search bar or search for it in the Finder, under Utilities. Sequentially click File – New – Disk image from folder, select the folder and click the “Create image” button.
“Only for me” - don't you want to add such a comment in the folders on your Mac OS X?
If you are looking for similar answers, then continue reading the following information. There are many files and folders that contain valuable information that you would not want to share. You may sometimes store important data on your work Mac or copy some personal photos. Because of this, you begin to wonder how to password protect folders on Mac OS X.
Is there a way to protect folders with a password?
You can password protect folders on a Mac using a tool available in the operating system.
Step 1
You should go to Finder ---> Applications ---> Utilities ---> Disk Utility. Then you need to click on the file ---> New ---> Empty disk image. Here you must enter a name for the image, and then click on the “save as” button.
Step 2
You must select 128-bit or 256-bit encryption. If you need speed, choose 128-bit encryption, and if you want increased security, then 256-bit is the best option. You will see the image format below read/write. This will help you read and also add new files in the future.
Step 3
After selecting the encryption fields, you must click on the “create” button. Disk Utility will begin creating images and will ask you for a password. You need to enter the password twice and remember it in the future.
Step 4
After clicking the OK button, the utility will begin creating a disk image. This will be a password protected image and you must double click on it. Now all you need to do is drag files and folders into the disk image. Thus, until a person enters the password, he will no longer be able to access the confidential data.
If you need to add new files, you must create an image that can hold up to 5 GB of data. You can create a folder with more space by returning to Disk Utility. K File ---> New ---> Black disk image. In the new window that opens, select 256-bit encryption and click the “create” button and enter a name. Every time someone tries to open the folder, they will be prompted to enter a password. Thus, until the password is entered correctly, no one can view your data. “Only for me” - don't you want to add such a comment in the folders on your Mac OS X?
"Just for me" - wouldn't you want to add a comment like that in folders on your Mac OS X?
Is there a way to protect folders with a password?
You can password protect folders on Mac using the tool available in the operating system.
You should go to Finder ---> Applications ---> Utilities ---> Disk Utility. Then you need to click on file ---> New ---> Blank disk image. Here you must enter a name for the image and then click on the "Save As" button.
You must choose 128-bit or 256-bit encryption. If you need speed, choose 128-bit encryption, and if you want increased security, then 256-bit is the best option. You will see the image format below read/write. This will help you read as well as add new files in the future.
After selecting the encryption fields, you must click on the “Create” button. Disk Utility will begin to create images and ask you to enter a password. You need to enter the password twice and remember it in the future.
After clicking OK, the utility will begin creating a disk image. This will be a password protected image and you must double click on it. Now all you have to do is drag and drop files and folders into the disk image. Thus, unless a person enters a password, he will no longer be able to access sensitive data.
If you need to add new files, you need to create an image that can hold up to 5 GB of data. You can create a folder with more space by returning to Disk Utility. Go to File ---> New ---> Black disk image. In the new window that opens, select 256-bit encryption and click the “Create” button and enter a name. Whenever someone tries to open the folder, they will be prompted for a password. This way, unless the password is entered correctly, no one can view your data.
For many Mac users sooner or later there is a need for hiding certain folders from prying eyes. Of course, in OS X there are various ways to create invisible folders or hiding existing ones. But let's look at this method again using the example of turning a simple folder into an invisible one.
First, you will need to select the folder that you want to make hidden and run Terminal. In the “Terminal” enter the command: “ chflags hidden ~/path to the selected folder/ " and press "Enter". After the process is completed, you can close Terminal.
As an example, let's try to hide the Music folder, which is located in the home directory. To do this, enter the following command in Terminal: “ chflags hidden ~/music/ " After this, the Music folder and all the files in it will immediately become hidden from the Finder.
The above method will make it invisible only to GUI OS X and visually no one will be able to find the hidden folder. But in order to completely hide the desired “folder” and its content, you should try to exclude it from Spotlight search and indexing, but keep in mind that an “experienced” user will still be able to calculate everything using the command line.
In order to access your invisible folder in Mac OS X You need to press the combination “ Command + Shift + G" and enter the same path to the folder that you specified before hiding it. After which you will gain access and be able to work with the content.
If you need make hidden folder visible again, then launch Terminal and enter the command: “ chflags nohidden ~/path to the desired folder/ »
Hiding secrets.
There are situations when it is necessary to hide some files and folders on the computer from prying eyes, be it correspondence with a former mistress (lover), incriminating evidence, old private photos or simply too frank films. Today we will tell you how you can quickly and easily hide files in OS X. Everything is done in 3 simple steps.
1. First, you'll need Terminal, which you can launch directly from the Spotlight search bar.
2. Then enter the command in Terminal chflags hidden.
3. Next, simply drag the folder or files you want to hide into the running window. After which the path to the selected object will automatically be displayed in the Terminal window. After pressing the Enter button, the folder/file will disappear.
This is the easiest option to hide information from prying eyes. Important: if a person knows the name of the folder and files, he will still be able to use Spotlight to detect the hidden file.
If you want your data to be completely invisible, you need to perform two more steps:
1. Go to System Preferences – Spotlight
2. In the Confidentiality tab, exclude folders with hidden content from the general search (for example, in my case /Users/YuryAndreev/Desktop/)
To return what is hidden, launch the terminal again and enter chflags nohidden ~/path to the hidden folder (or file)/
Everything ingenious is simple. Situations are different, keep your private securely!
You've probably noticed more than once that you can't see hidden files in the Finder on your Mac. It doesn’t matter which operating system is installed on your computer - Mac OS, Windows or Linux, each of them has its own hidden folders and files, and creates new ones in the process.
If in the same Windows it is enough to check the box in the settings to show them, then enable showing hidden files in Mac OS a little more complicated. But after reading our instructions, viewing hidden files and folders on Mac will not be any problem for you. So, how do you enable hidden files on Mac OS? Very simple!
UPDATE: If you have Mac OS Sierra or later, just use the keyboard shortcut "shift+cmd+.".
If this doesn't work, then you are using Mac OS El Capitan or higher old version OS X, then the instructions below will help you.
Typically, hidden folders and files are system ones and are necessary for the normal functioning of the computer’s operating system, that is, they should not be changed or deleted. However, there are exceptions everywhere, and sometimes you need to access a file that you don’t even see in the Finder, for example.htaccess for webmasters. All files whose names begin with a dot are hidden by default in Mac OS.
Some hidden files and folders are needed for the OS to work, and some are created operating system to speed up the processing and delivery of information to the user - they store information about how to display a particular folder and sort the files in it; reduced copies of photos (thumbs) for quick rendering, etc.
If for some reason you need to show hidden files in the Finder, here's an easy way to do it through the Terminal on Mac OS.
1. Open the Terminal program
First you need to open the program "Terminal", which is installed by default on every computer under Mac control OS. To do this, in the Dock panel (the panel with programs, which is usually located at the bottom of the screen), open Finder (always the leftmost icon) and select “Programs” from the menu on the left. In the list of installed programs that appears, find the program "Terminal.app" and run it (there are other ways).
By the way, open any installed program much more is possible in a simple way- press buttons Ctrl + space and start typing the program name in the pop-up window. Doing this is much faster than searching the right application in the programs folder.
2. Turn on showing hidden files and folders
This item will be the last one if you only need to show hidden files and folders in Mac OS and leave everything like that. To do this, copy the following code
defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES
and paste it into the previously opened Terminal window using the keyboard shortcut cmd+V and press Enter. We recently talked about how to copy and paste text on Mac OS.
If you want to make one specific file/folder hidden, or vice versa, open, it will help you.
Attention! Be careful when changing or deleting hidden files - they are hidden from the average user for a reason. Most of them affect performance Mac systems OS, so you should only change them if you are sure of what you are doing and why.
