GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 334667
Warning users when they are going to rename a file/folder to a hidden one
Last modified: 2018-07-13 16:25:58 UTC
They add a dot at the beginning of a filename/folder. The file/folder is still visible. But next time (or Ctrl-R) that file will become invisible. Nautilus should popup a warning, stating that adding such a dot will make files/folders hidden.
Thanks for your bug report! Did you trigger this functionality accidentally or observe that somebody did this? CCing usability team.
I did. Although I tried on purpose :)
Yes, sounds like a good idea. You'd probably want an alert something like: <big><b>Create Hidden File?</b></big> Filenames beginning with periods[1] are hidden from view in the file manager. Renaming this file to <new filename> will cause it to be hidden. You can show all the hidden files in a folder by selecting Show Hidden Files from the View menu. [Cancel] [Rename] Of course, you should only see this warning if View->Show Hidden Files isn't currently active. My only concern would be that it might get annoying after you'd seen it a few times, but we really don't do "don't show this again" warnings in GNOME, so not sure if there's a good solution to that. [1] Or full-stops, or dots, depending on locale :)
We now use a Popover, so we can display the warning in-line. Discussion continues on https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/nautilus/issues/529