GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 129173
.hidden file should have a front-end
Last modified: 2021-06-18 15:28:26 UTC
The .hidden file should have a front end. I'd assume it could be as simple as a "Hidden" checkbox in the folder's properties.
A problem I could see is if that was set in the properties window, it is very easy to make a mistake, and if you have no shell experience, it would be hard to make it "visible" again without showing hidden files or folders, and then finding the folder again and unchecking "hidden". I think this should remain an "expert" option (that is, no UI, just a file to affect changes). This makes it much harder for a newbie to make a mistake that will make him/her think that their folder of important data is 'gone.'
*** Bug 147764 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I agree it's an expert option. But a UI would be awfully handy. For example on the tab permissions tab of the file properties there could be a button advanced which popups a dialog to make the file hidden and also some of the other option. Which non expert user knows what a sticky flag or group ID flag is? It took me quite a while to find out that you can use this .hidden file to hide files from nautilus. It isn't mentioned anywhere in the help file
Maybe we should think into some if this: * Have a yellow info bar in the folder, just after the file has been hidden, with an undo button * Have two show hidden files options. One called "Show hidden files" and one called "Show system files", where system files are files starting with a dot.
*** Bug 356545 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
How do other operating systems (OS X, Windows) handle this?
On Windows, hidden is a property of the file in the filesystem. This is not derived from the name like on Unix. You'd right click a file icon and check the hidden box. The file browser then has an option in the menus to display or not hidden files, just like Nautilus does. On Mac OS, we have standard Unix behaviour where files with names that start with a dot are hidden. To display them, it seems the only way is to change a "defaults" setting (kind of like our gsettings) via the terminal and restart the Finder.
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