How to Hide/Unhide a Folder/File in Windows 10 with CMD [MiniTool News]

By Alisa | Follow | Last Updated December 10, 2019

Summary :

This tutorial offers a step-by-step guide for how to hide a folder or file in Windows 10 by using CMD (Command Prompt). You can also learn how to show hidden files Windows 10 using CMD. To recover deleted or lost files on Windows 10 computer, a top free file recovery software from MiniTool is also provided.

If you want to hide some important folders and files on Windows 10 to keep them away from others’ sight, you can use Windows Command Prompt (cmd.exe) tool to easily and quickly hide a file or folder in Windows 10.

Check below how to hide a folder/file in Windows 10 using CMD, as well as check how to unhide or show hidden files in Windows 10 with Command Prompt when you want.

How to Hide a Folder (File) in Windows 10 Using CMD

Step 1. Open Windows Command Prompt

At first, you should open the cmd.exe. You have several ways to open it. The most common way is to press Windows + R keys at the same time to open Window Run dialog, type cmd in Run window, and press Ctrl + Shift + Enter to open elevated Command Prompt in Windows 10.

Step 2. Hide a Folder or File Using Attrib Command

Then you can type the command line below in Command Prompt window, and hit Enter to hide the target folder in Windows 10.

attrib +h c:\documents

In this command, “+” means setting an attribute, “h” refers to the hidden file attribute. You should replace “c:\documents” with the folder path and name you’d like to hide, e.g. f:\work. You can right-click the file or folder and choose Properties to check its location.

Alternatively, you can also type the command line cd file or folder path in Command Prompt, and hit Enter to go to the file/folder location, for instance, cd f:.

Then type the command line attrib +h work and hit Enter to hide the Work folder in F partition.

Tip: To hide a file in Windows 10 with CMD, you should also include the file extension after the file name in the command line, e.g. f:\work.xls.

Thus, you won’t see the hidden file or folder in your Windows 10 computer.

How to Unhide a Folder in Windows 10 with CMD

To show hidden files Windows 10, you can still use the attrib command in Command Prompt to easily realize it.

Step 1. Follow the same instructions above to enter into Command Prompt window.

Step 2. Type the command line attrib -h f:\work and hit Enter to make the hidden Work folder in F partition visible again. You should replace “f:\work” with the exact path of the folder you’d like to unhide. If it’s a single file you want to unhide, you should also add the file extension after the file name in the attrib command.

Best Free Way to Recover Deleted/Lost Files on Windows 10

Here, we also introduce an easy-to-use, clean and free data recovery software to you to help you recover any lost or deleted files on Windows 10/8/7 computer.

MiniTool Power Data Recovery helps you recover data from computer local hard drive, external hard drive, SSD, USB flash drive, SD card, and more with ease. Its free edition allows you to recover up to 1GB data for free.

Free pen drive data recovery. Easy 3 steps to recover data/files from pen drive for free (incl. corrupted, formatted, not recognized, not showing pen drive).

Easy user guide: You can just connect your device and launch MiniTool Power Data Recovery, choose the target device in its main UI, and click Scan button, it will automatically scan the data on the target device. After the scanning is completed, you can easily find your lost/deleted files and click Save button to store the recovered files to a new destination.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Position: Columnist

Alisa is a professional English editor with 4-year experience. She loves writing and focuses on sharing detailed solutions and thoughts for computer problems, data recovery & backup, digital gadgets, tech news, etc. Through her articles, users can always easily get related problems solved and find what they want. In spare time, she likes basketball, badminton, tennis, cycling, running, and singing. She is very funny and energetic in life, and always brings friends lots of laughs.

How to hide files and folders on Windows 10

No matter what kind of content you keep on your computer, you’ll always find reasons to hide certain files and folders. Perhaps you have important documents and videos that you want to keep under wraps, or you simply want to prevent users from accidentally deleting certain files if you’re sharing your PC with other people.

For whatever the reason it might be, on Windows 10, you can quickly hide a file or folder in two different ways, including using File Explorer or using the attrib command using Command Prompt.

In this Windows 10 guide, we’ll walk you through the easy steps to hide a file and folder on your computer. In addition, you’ll learn the steps to access those hidden items as needed.

How to hide files and folders using File Explorer

The easiest way to keep content hidden is using File Explorer.

1. Open File Explorer.
2. Navigate to the file or folder you want to hide.

Right-click the item and click on Properties.

Click Apply.

Click OK.

Click OK again to complete the task.

Once you’ve completed the steps, the hidden items will not be visible anymore, because by default Windows 10 doesn’t show hidden files.

If you want to access your hidden items you’ll have to type the complete path to the hidden folder or file you want to open and press Enter. For example: C:\Users\admin\Desktop\Files\Secret Files\Great Secret.txt.

Or you can open File Explorer, click on the View tab and make sure to check the Hidden items option. Then you can browse your hidden items as you would normally do with other content.

At any time, you can make the files and folders visible again by using the same steps mentioned above, but this time on step 4 make sure to clear the Hidden option.

How to hide files and folders using Command Prompt

Alternatively, you can also use Command Prompt to hide files and folders on your computer.

1. Open Start.
2. Do a search for Command Prompt and click the result.

Type the following command to navigate to the items you want to hide and press Enter:

In the command replace the path after cd with the path to your file or folder.

Type the following command to hide a folder or file and press Enter:

attrib +h «Secret Files»

In the command replace «Secret Files» with the name of your folder or file. Quotation marks are only necessary when there are spaces in the name.

If you’re trying to hide a folder with files and subfolders, which you also want to keep hidden, then you’ll need to use these steps as well.

While in Command Prompt type the following command to navigate inside the hidden folder and press Enter:

cd «Secret Files»

In the command replace «Secret Files» with the name of your hidden folder.

Type the following command to hide all files and folders inside the hidden folder and press Enter:

After completing the steps, the items with the hidden attribute will no longer be visible.

Making hidden files and folders visible again

If you change your mind, you can use the following steps to remove the hidden attribute for files and folders.

1. Open Start.
2. Do a search for Command Prompt and click the result.

Type the following command to navigate to the hidden items location and press Enter:

In the command replace the path after cd with the path to your file or folder.

Type the following command to make the items visible again and press Enter:

attrib -h «Secret Files»

In the command replace «Secret Files» with the name of your folder or file. Quotation marks are only necessary when there are spaces in the name.

In the case you also set the hidden attribute for files and subfolders inside of a folder, then do the following to remove the attribute.

While in Command Prompt type the following command to navigate inside the hidden folder and press Enter:

cd «Secret Files»

In the command replace «Secret Files» with the name of your hidden folder.

Type the following command to remove the hidden attribute from all files and folders inside the folder and press Enter:

Which method do you prefer to hide files and folders on Windows 10? Tell us in the comments below.

More Windows 10 resources

For more help articles, coverage, and answers on Windows 10, you can visit the following resources:

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How to Show or Hide Hidden Files and Folders

Hide or show hidden files & folders in Windows 10, 8, 7, Vista, & XP

Hidden files are usually hidden for good reason—they’re often very important files and being hidden from view makes them harder to change or delete.

But what if you want to see those hidden files?

There are many good reasons you might want to show hidden files and folders in your searches and folder views, but most of the time it’s because you’re dealing with a Windows problem and you need access to one of these important files to edit or delete.

On the other hand, if hidden files are, in fact, showing but you instead want to hide them, it’s just a matter of reversing the toggle.

Fortunately, it’s really easy to show or hide hidden files and folders in Windows.

Instructions in this article apply to Windows 10, Windows 8, and Windows 7.

How to Show or Hide Hidden Files and Folders in Windows

If you’re comfortable with the command line, there’s a faster way to get this done. See the More Help. section at the bottom of the page and then skip down to Step 4.

Select the Appearance and Personalization link.​

If you’re viewing Control Panel in a way where you see all the links and icons but none of them are categorized, you won’t see this link—skip down to Step 3.

Select the File Explorer Options (Windows 10) or Folder Options (Windows 8/7) link.

Select the View tab.

In the Advanced settings section, locate the Hidden files and folders category.​

You should be able to see it at the bottom without scrolling. There are two options within it.

Choose what you want to do:

• Don’t show hidden files, folders, or drives will hide the files, folders, and drives that have the hidden attribute toggled on.​
• Show hidden files, folders, and drives lets you see the hidden data.

Select OK at the bottom.

You can test to see if hidden files are actually being hidden by browsing to the C:\ drive. If you do not see a folder named ProgramData, then hidden files and folders are being hidden from view.

$NtUninstallKB folders contain information needed to uninstall updates you’ve received from Microsoft. While unlikely, it’s possible you might not see these folders but may still be configured correctly to view hidden folders and files. This might be the case if you’ve never installed any updates to your operating system.

More Help With Hidden File Settings

A faster way to open File Explorer Options (Windows 10) or Folder Options (Windows 8/7/Vista/XP) is to enter the command control folders into the Run dialog box. You can open the Run dialog box the same in every version of Windows: with the Windows Key + R key combination.

The same command can be run from Command Prompt.

Also, please know that hiding hidden files and folders isn’t the same as deleting them. Items that are marked as hidden are simply no longer visible—they’re not gone.