How to hide (in Thunar and Nautilus) a directory without putting a dot in its name?

Question

Usually Linux programs store user's settings in ~/.* directories. But unfortunately some developers (of some applications I need) do not follow this rule and don't start their settings storage folders names with a dot. This results in never-user-used folders cluttering (not the right word perhaps, as there are not many, but they annoy anyway) a home directory. Renaming them is not an option, as the applications won't find them in this case (and will create them again).

Is there a way to hide a folder having no dot starting its name from being displayed in common file system browsers (I actually use Thunar of XFCE, alongside with Midnight Commander and Krusader, but wouldn't mind to know about Nautilus too).

Solution 1

Nautilus (Update: This should also work with Thunar now) will hide any file or folder that is listed in the file .hidden located in the same directory.

There are two ways to hide a folder in Nautilus:

Nautilus script

1. Save the following code in a new file in your home folder. Name it Hide.

   #!/usr/bin/env python
   
   import commands
   from os.path import join
   
   
   files = commands.getoutput("echo $NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_FILE_PATHS")
   cwd = commands.getoutput("echo $NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_CURRENT_URI")
   cwd = cwd[7:]
   
   for f in files.split(" /"):
   
       f = f.split("/")[-1]
   
       commands.getoutput("echo "+f+" >> "+join(cwd, ".hidden"))
   

2. Run the following command to install the script:

   cp Hide ~/.local/share/nautilus/scripts/ && chmod u+x ~/.local/share/nautilus/scripts/Hide
   

3. In Nautilus, select one or more files/folders and right click. Select Hide from the Scripts menu:

   

   Reload the current location ( F5 ) and the selected files/folders will be hidden.

Command line

Say you want to hide a folder called "Rick Astley's Greatest Hits", just run the following command:

echo "Rick Astley's Greatest Hits" >> .hidden

Solution 2

Open synaptic and search for "nautilus-hide" install it. Logout and login. Now right click on any file or folder. You will now see a "Hide" option in the Context Menu.

It will not modify the name but hide the folder.

Comments

[Ivan]

Exactly a kind of answer I wished to get. But, unfortunately, doesn't work for Thunar.

[Isaiah]

@Ivan, Hopefully they will add it eventually, see the bug report I linked to in my answer.

[karthick87]

Why double quotes "ObnoxiousFolder"??

[user2390005]

FYI, the bug report was closed as WONTFIX (rather rudely IMO, since there was a patch for it already, and the project maintainer basically said "I don't care"). We will need another solution...

[Brian Campbell]

Recent version of Thunar support this as they use GIO to determine hidden directories, and GIO now implements support for the .hidden file.

[Tobias Kienzler]

Nice script, though I prefer using more of Python's own IO. According to help.ubuntu.com/community/NautilusScriptsHowto NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_FILE_PATHS is newline-separated, so shouldn't your for ... split be with () instead of (" /")? (The slash is irrelevant, since you only take the basename` anyway, for which you could use os.path.basename btw)