Hide files and folders on a Mac

If you have worked with Windows, then the way to hide it from prying eyes is by setting the hidden check box. Now move to a Mac and you want to hide a file... Hmmm
No way to do that?? This can't be true, Mac is based on an Unix kernel, so it should have more control on the files. It even has an advanced file system HFS+ (one that creates the .DS_STORE files like the plague) So can we not hide our files or folders? There was a review a few months ago about UberMask, a software that hides files from prying eyes at http://reviewme.oz-apps.com/2011/01/for-your-eyes-only.html

It all started with a tweet this evening past 12:00 am, the tweet mentioned about dot files being the only way to hide files and it struck me that there has to be some way to do that, now the software would not create dot file versions of all files just to save them, so what is it?

I did come across some wonderful commands in the Mac OS X system that get installed with the developer tools. So, as a proof of concept, I quickly wrote up an app in Objective-C that allowed to demonstrate the functionality to show/hide the file/folder.

SCREENSHOT

How to use it
1. Drag/Drop a file/folder on the text box (The filename get's copied there)
2. Click the Hide button
--> The file/folder should have disappeared
VERY IMPORTANT: DO NOT CLOSE THE APP OR CLEAR THE NAME!
Search for this file/folder using spotlight, or Finder, it will not show up, it is hidden.

3. Now click on the Show button, the file/folder should be back. As simple as that.

This is a demo, if this was a commercial software, it would have had the files/folder hidden stored in a list, so that it can show them or at least give the user a way to remember the files/folders. So you can hide multiple folders by saving them one by one, but to be able to restore them, save the path somewhere, so that when you want to get the folders back, you can type in the names of those directories.

Use this to hide your file from prying eyes. When hidden since Finder and spotlight cannot find it, most GUI based apps cannot see the file/folder.

So have a blast trying out the Folder Hider demo app. you can download it from our website here.

Please note that this is a demo project, not a final or a commercial project from OZ Apps. So it is advised that you create a couple of folders on the desktop that you can visually see and if anything goes wrong (it cannot, there is not much that it does)

cheers,
?:)