How to Hide Files in Mac OS X

You may need to hide some confidential files in your Mac just for private use. Here are some methods I have collected from the Internet on how to hide files in Mac OSX. I post them out in case they might help.

1. Using third-part software like "apimac secret folder" or "onlyx" to hide a file or file folder.
2. Files whose names start with a dot "." are hidden by default. For example, the folder named "refox" will be hidden if you change its name to ".refox". (This seems not working any more in Leopard as it doesn’t allow to manually change a file name into one starting with a dot.)
   
   You can use the command "mv .refox refox" under the current directory to make the hidden folder ".refox" visible, while the command "ls -a" will list all of files in that directory by force, including hidden ones.
   
   Or, you can type "defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE" in your Terminal to
   set the variable "AppleShowAllFiles" of "com.apple.finder.plist" in "Preferences" to "TRUE" and the second command "killall Finder" will restart the Finder and refresh the content. That is how you can show the hidden files in your Mac system.
   
   If you don't want to use any command listed above, you can install XCode Tools, then navigate to "com.apple.finder.plist" in your "Preferences" folder. Double-click this file will launch it using "Property List Editor" in Xcode Tools by default. Locating to the "AppleShowAllFiles" item and setting the value to "TRUE" will achieve the same effect. If there is no "AppleShowAllFiles" item there, you can also add this item under "Root". After this, you can use the "force quit" in
   Apple menu to re-launch the Finder and check the results.
   
   If you want to hide those shown les, you need to change the value of "AppleShowAllFiles" back to FALSE and re-start the Finder.
3. (Recommended) Change the extension of the file you want to hide into "app" to pretend an application; also change the icon of the file (can be an icon of any application); Right-click the icon of the app file and choose "show package content" to open the folder.