How to hide files and folders on a Mac — and why hiding isn't protection

Every hiding method compared

macOS gives you five ways to put things out of sight. None of them locks anything. The last column is the one to read before you hide something that matters.

Scroll sideways on small screens. “Real protection” means someone who finds the item still can't open it.

The difference in one sentence: hiding changes whether you see a file, encryption changes whether anyone can read it. A hidden folder is a normal folder with a “don't show this” note attached. Finder respects the note. Almost nothing else does.

• Hides from Finder
• Undo One command
• Needs Terminal

Every file and folder on a Mac can carry a hidden flag. It's how macOS keeps your Library folder out of sight. You set it with the chflags command, and it doesn't change the item's name or location, so apps and shortcuts that point to it keep working.

1. Open Terminal from Applications › Utilities, or press ⌘ Space and type “Terminal”.
2. Type chflags hidden followed by a space. Don't press Return yet.
3. Drag the file or folder from Finder into the Terminal window. Its full path is typed in for you, spaces and all.
4. Press Return. The item disappears from Finder. If it's still showing, close and reopen the window.
5. To unhide it later, run the same command with nohidden instead of hidden.

# Hide a folder
chflags hidden ~/Documents/Private

# Show it again
chflags nohidden ~/Documents/Private

# Check: hidden items show "hidden" in the flags column
ls -lO ~/Documents

You don't need sudo for your own files. Hiding a folder hides everything inside it from Finder too. Add -R if you want every item inside flagged as well (the SS64 chflags reference lists all the options).

• Hides from Finder and Spotlight
• Undo Rename it
• Needs Nothing

Any file or folder whose name begins with a full stop is treated as invisible. This is the old Unix convention behind files like .zshrc, and it has one advantage over chflags: dot-named items are left out of Spotlight results as well.

In Finder

1. Show hidden items first with ⌘ ⇧ . in a Finder window. Without this, Finder tries to talk you out of dot names.
2. Select the item, press Return and type a full stop at the start of its name.
3. Confirm when Finder asks whether you're sure.
4. Press ⌘ ⇧ . again. The item vanishes.

In Terminal

Renaming with mv skips Finder's warning altogether:

# Hide by renaming
mv ~/Documents/Private ~/Documents/.Private

# Unhide by renaming back
mv ~/Documents/.Private ~/Documents/Private

Renaming does change the item's path, so scripts or settings that refer to it by path will need updating.

• Hides from Spotlight search
• Undo Remove it from the list
• Needs System Settings

Spotlight is how most people stumble on hidden files. You can tell Spotlight to skip a folder or a whole drive. On macOS Tahoe 26 and Sequoia 15, Apple's steps are:

1. Open System Settings › Spotlight.
2. Click Search Privacy in the lower right.
3. Click the add button (+) and choose the folder, or drag it into the list.

On macOS Sonoma 14, the same list is in System Settings › Siri & Spotlight, under a button called Spotlight Privacy.

The folder stays visible in Finder: this only affects searching. And the list itself is a signpost to exactly what you didn't want found.

• Hides from Your photo library
• Lock Touch ID or login password
• Needs macOS Ventura or later for the lock

Photos has its own hiding place, and it's the best of the built-in options because it's locked. Since macOS Ventura, the Hidden album is locked by default and asks for Touch ID or your login password.

1. Select the photos and choose Image › Hide Photo, press ⌘ L, or Control-click and choose Hide Photo. They leave your main library.
2. To see them, choose View › Show Hidden Photo Album, then click Hidden below Utilities in the sidebar, and unlock it with Touch ID or your password.
3. To take the album out of the sidebar, choose View › Hide Hidden Photo Album.

The lock also covers Recently Deleted. You can switch it off in Photos › Settings › General by unticking Use Touch ID or password, as Macworld explains. If you use iCloud Photos, photos you hide on your Mac are hidden on your other devices too.

Know its limits. Anyone who knows your Mac login password can open the album. The lock guards the album inside Photos; it isn't a separate encrypted folder, and the photos are in your backups and iCloud Photos like any others. It's ideal for stopping private pictures popping up when someone scrolls through your holiday snaps.

• Hides from Casual browsing
• Undo Move it back
• Needs Nothing

Your home folder contains a Library folder that macOS hides for you. Apps keep their settings and data there and people rarely look, which makes it a tempting place to tuck a folder away.

• Open it: in Finder, hold Option and choose Go › Library. Or press ⇧ ⌘ G (Go to Folder) and type ~/Library.
• Make a folder of your own in there with a dull name and put your files inside. Don't mix them into another app's folder.
• To make Library visible all the time, choose Go › Home, then View › Show View Options, and tick Show Library Folder, as Apple describes.

This is hiding by obscurity, and Library is the best-known hiding place on a Mac. It's also where people clear things out when troubleshooting, so it's a poor home for anything you'd hate to lose.

Show hidden files on a Mac

This is the other side of every method above, and it's the reason hiding isn't protection: showing hidden files takes one keystroke.

The keyboard shortcut

In any Finder window, press ⌘ ⇧ . (Command-Shift-full stop). Hidden files and folders appear, slightly faded. Press it again to hide them. This covers both chflags and dot-named items.

The Terminal setting

Finder also has a long-standing preference, AppleShowAllFiles, that shows hidden files every time. According to macos-defaults.com, the keyboard shortcut toggles this same setting, so on recent macOS the shortcut is all most people need.

# Always show hidden files (Finder restarts)
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool true && killall Finder

# Back to normal
defaults delete com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles && killall Finder

In Terminal itself

ls -a lists dot-named files. Plain ls ignores the hidden flag completely, so chflags-hidden items show up in every listing, and ls -lO labels them. A few system files, such as .DS_Store, stay out of Finder even with hidden files showing.

How to unhide everything

Forgotten what you hid, or where? Work through the list.

• terminal
  chflags. Run chflags nohidden on the item. For a folder and everything in it, use chflags -R nohidden ~/Documents/Private. Don't point -R at your whole home folder: it would also unhide Library and other items macOS hides on purpose.
• travel_explore
  Find what's hidden. find ~/Documents -flags +hidden lists flagged items in Documents, and find ~/Documents -name ".*" -not -name ".DS_Store" lists dot-named ones. The find reference explains the -flags option.
• edit
  Dot names. Show hidden items with ⌘ ⇧ ., then rename the item without the leading full stop, or use mv.
• visibility
  The “always show” setting. If Finder shows faded files everywhere, run defaults delete com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles && killall Finder.
• search
  Spotlight. In System Settings › Spotlight › Search Privacy, select the folder and click the remove button (−).
• photo_library
  Photos. Open the Hidden album, select the photos, Control-click and choose Unhide Photo.
• folder_open
  Library. Open it with Option and Go › Library, and drag your folder back to where it belongs.

Who hiding stops, and who it doesn't

Hiding works on people who don't go looking. Someone glancing at your Desktop, a child browsing Finder, a colleague watching you share your screen: a hidden folder simply isn't there for them. That's genuinely useful.

It doesn't work on anyone curious enough to try one of these:

• keyboard
  ⌘⇧. in Finder. The shortcut is on countless help pages and shows everything hidden with chflags or a dot name, in any folder.
• search
  Spotlight. Type a word from a file's name and chflags-hidden files appear in the results, with their location.
• terminal
  Terminal. ls ignores the hidden flag entirely, and ls -a shows dot names.
• backup
  Backups and iCloud. Hiding doesn't take anything out of Time Machine or iCloud Drive. The files are copied there like everything else, unencrypted unless the backup itself is encrypted.
• history
  Recent files. An app's Open Recent menu can still list a hidden file you opened in it.

And none of it matters once someone has the folder open: a hidden file is a normal, readable file. Only encryption keeps the contents unreadable to someone who finds it.

When hiding is fine, and when you need encryption

Ask one question: what happens if someone finds it? If the answer is “mild embarrassment” or “the surprise is spoiled”, hide it. If the answer involves money, identity, health, work or another person's privacy, encrypt it.

The free, built-in way to encrypt is a disk image from Disk Utility. It's a single file that asks for a password, opens like a drive and locks when you eject it. Our step-by-step disk image guide walks through every setting, and the password-protect a folder comparison sets it against archives, locked PDFs and Notes.

Doghouse makes the same Apple encrypted disk images, called vaults, and handles the chores. Unlock with a password or Touch ID and the vault opens in Finder. Unlocked contents are kept out of Spotlight, “Keep out of iCloud” is on by default, and vaults lock themselves after 15 minutes idle, when the screen locks or when the Mac sleeps. Because vaults are standard disk images, Disk Utility can open them without Doghouse.

Hiding still has a place on top of encryption: an encrypted image with a dull name, hidden too, draws less attention. Just don't let hiding be the only thing between a stranger and your files. More on specific situations: keeping files private on a shared Mac, keeping a folder out of iCloud and locking a folder with Touch ID.

Frequently asked questions

About this guide

Written by the Doghouse team at Sprout Media in Dublin. We make Doghouse, a Mac app for encrypted, password-protected folders. Commands and menu paths are checked against Apple's documentation and command references for macOS Tahoe 26, and older names are noted where they differ.

Published 10 September 2026 · Last updated 10 September 2026. Spotted something out of date? Tell us.

Sources

1. Prevent Spotlight searches in files on Mac — Apple Support
2. Hide photos with the Hidden album — Apple Support
3. Hide photos and videos from view on Mac — Apple Support
4. Library folder — Apple Support
5. Mac keyboard shortcuts — Apple Support
6. How to hide files and folders — The Eclectic Light Company
7. chflags command reference — SS64
8. find command reference — SS64
9. Finder: show hidden files — macos-defaults.com
10. How to show hidden files on a Mac — Macworld
11. How to lock the Recently Deleted and Hidden albums in Photos — Macworld