Nautilus Hider

Easily hide files and folder in nautilus file manager

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Background motivation

There are certain auxiliary files that are necessary for certain programs to function properly, but may not be necessary for humans to view. It is often best to keep these files hidden. However, hiding files in Nautilus file manager can be difficult. There are two options: (a) You can rename the file by adding a . to the beginning of the file name, but this may cause issues with certain programs. (b) You can create a .hidden file and include the name of the file within it. However, this method requires the exact full name of the file, glob patterns do not work, and it also does not work for subdirectories. This code streamlines the process of creating .hidden files by adding a right-click context menu option.

Installation:

Simply download and run the nautilusHider.py python code. This will install the necessary scripts in the nautilus scripts folder. Additionally, you can specify certain file patterns in the python code that you always want to be hidden."

Usage:

To hide a file, right click on it and select Scripts > nhider > hide.py. Alternatively, you can choose hideAll.py to hide all files that match the patterns specified in the python code. To make all hidden files visible again, select unhideAll.py or simply delete the .hidden file from the current directory.