How to hide files and folders on a Mac
Sharing a computer with other people in your house or office isn’t the best of situations. Sometimes it’s unavoidable, but how do you keep your files and folders private? If you work on a Mac, you can create separate login profiles. It’s not always practical, but it will do in a pinch.
For other occasions, you could opt to hide personal files and folders from prying eyes. This will work if you share your computer, but it also comes in handy for business files. Many of us are working from home now, and if you have sensitive documents or spreadsheets, think about hiding them. Tap or click here to hide folders on a Windows PC.
No matter your situation, you most likely have files on your Mac that you want to keep private. Let’s go over how you can hide files and folders and see them again when needed.
Here’s how to hide folders
It’s a bit more complex to achieve on a Mac than what it is on a Windows-based computer, but the results will be the same.
- You’re going to use the terminal to run a series of commands, so open it by pressing Command+Space, and then type terminal.
- Hit Enter.
- When the terminal loads, type the following and don’t forget to add a space at the end: chflags hidden.
- With the file or folder that you want to hide, drag and drop it into the terminal window.
- This will create a path to where it will be.
- Hit Enter and the file will disappear.
- In the terminal window, it will create a path to where the file is.
Pro tip: You can also hide files or folders through the terminal window by renaming the folder to start with a “.” (period). You can also hide file name extensions, although the process is different.
RELATED: 3 new Mac tips for better online security
How to view hidden folders
Now that your folders are hidden, at some point, you will want to view them again. Again, it’s a bit tricky, but here is how:
- In the Finder menu, click Go.
- At the bottom, click Go to Folder.
- A small window will pop up. The path of the hidden folders that are stored will be typed here.
- There is an easy way to do this. Simply start with the tilde key (~) followed by the path created in the terminal window. If the folder is on your desktop, as an example, the path will start with ~/Desktop/(then the name of the file).
How to hide photos and videos from your phone’s camera roll
In the U.S. alone, 230 million people are active social media users. Think about all the posts, photos and videos shared every day.
If you didn’t hear, Adobe finally released a free Photoshop Camera app for both iOS and Android. It uses artificial intelligence to clean up your photos. Tap or click here for a quick video showing how the free Photoshop app works and the direct links to get it for your smartphone.
Privacy tip: Hide your photos and videos in secure folders
In one form or another, we all share the contents of our devices with other people. Whether it’s the immediate family we live with or our contacts of social media, the world’s population has never been more of an open book than today.