Have you ever wished you could just hide an entire folder on your Mac to guard it from prying eyes or accidental discovery? There are many reasons why you might want to secure or hide a folder on your Mac – especially if you use a shared computer. The good news is that Apple has built a way to to just that right into OS X, and all it requires is some quick work in Terminal!
To create a hidden folder, just launch Terminal from the Utilities folder, and enter the following command at the prompt:
mkdir .hidden
The text after the period will become the name of the folder – so feel free to change “hidden” to anything you’d like the folder to be called. The file will be saved directly to your user folder. To access the folder at a later time, just launch Finder, select “Go to Folder…” from the “Go” menu, and enter the folder’s directory. You can then access, add, or remove anything you need to from the folder, and it will remain hidden when you finish.
It’s worth noting that this isn’t the most secure way to protect a folder’s contents, as anyone with a reasonably idea about what the folder is named could easily access it in the same way. For added protection, check out our tutorial on how to password protect files and folders on your Mac! You can also set up your Mac to display hidden files or folders by default in the Finder.
For more helpful tips, check out our full collection of tutorials by visiting our How-To category!
