- Go to the file or folder you are interested in
- Click on the icon and tap on the right button
- A dropdown menu will open with different options
- Go to the end and open the Properties section
- In Properties, tap on the first tab: General
- Scroll down to see “Attributes”
- There will be two options: Read Only / Hidden
- Choose the option “Hidden“
- Confirm with “accept” and exit the properties
You will see that the icon becomes somewhat more transparent compared to other similar ones. A few seconds later, it disappears. But it has not been deleted, but we have simply managed to hide the corresponding file or folder and we can show it whenever we want if we go to the folder and change the configuration of “view” Of the same. In our case, from the desktop.
We open the desktop folder and go to the “View” tab that we find at the top next to “Home” and “Share”. Here we will see a series of options such as a preview panel or a details panel as well as several different views on how we want the icons to be displayed: details, list, small, large, medium, very large… We can also group or choose the order, group or adjust by columns, etc. And, finally, we will see three options that we can mark in a box next to its name:
- element slots
- File name extensions
- hidden elements
If you mark hidden elements, the document that you had hidden or hidden following the previous steps will appear on the screen again.
Another option to hide elements is to do it from this screen. In the “view” section you will see that there is (on the right) a button that indicates hide selected items”. This will allow us to hide files and folders in batch without having to go to the properties of each of them. We simply have to mark all the folders that interest us or the files and check the “hide selected items” button as you see in the image below. The same thing will happen as in the previous case and we must choose “hidden elements” to be able to see them. The rest will not see them, but keep in mind that they are not protected with any password and that anyone can press that button and see and open them freely.
Hide app without uninstall
In case you want to hide an app instead of a file or folder, we can do it too although the steps will be different. We can do it from the computer configuration, in the registry, or using a third-party program that is specifically responsible for this task. Both options are easy.
from the record
To hide an application in Windows 10 from the registry, the first thing we have to do is open the system registry. To do this, we must tap on “Windows + R” on the keyboard. A “Run” window will open and we will have to type “Regedit” in it. Once you have it, click on accept and open this window. Or, we go to Start and search for “Registry Editor” and click on it.
When we have opened it, we have to write the following:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionUninstall
There we will find a lot of registry keys, specifically one for each application installed on the computer. We will see them on the left side of the screen, as you can see in the image below. To know which application each one corresponds to, we select it and on the right side we look at the named string value DisplayName. Next to this, the corresponding name of the application or program that interests us will appear.
To hide an application, we must find it. The problem with this system is that we will have to go clicking one by one until you find the one that interests us and we must be especially careful not to make mistakes so as not to hide or delete the program that it is not. Of course, before proceeding with its deletion, we must make a backup copy in case at any time we want to show it again and that they appear in the list of installed programs and ready to uninstall.
Once you have it selected, tap on it in the left panel. You will open a drop-down menu in which we must choose “New” and here we choose Value DWORD (32 bit). In the heat, change the name to “SystemComponent” and in “value information” change the 0 to a 1. Once ready, accept and save.
With specialized programs
Depending on the type of application that we want to hide, the other option is to use a specialized program or third-party applications. For example, we can use the Hide From Uninstall List tool. An application that we can get totally free from this link. Once the .ZIP file is downloaded, we unzip it and launch the executable file. The tool’s interface will automatically open where a list of installed applications will be shown that we can hide from Hide From Uninstall List. It is much more comfortable and simpler to do this than to go one by one in the registry since the program will show us a list with all the installed applications and we can choose whether to hide or show them.
Its operation is very simple, since, to hide an application, all we have to do is mark the application in question from the list and then click on the ghost button displayed on the top bar of the tool. If we prefer, it is also possible to hide an application if we click on it with the right mouse button in the list itself and select the Hide from programs and features option from the context menu. This will make it not appear in the list of applications to download from the Control Panel.
We can simply return to the program whenever we want to hide or show as needed or as we install new things that we want to hide. It will take us just a few seconds and we will hide it completely, they will even stop appearing in the uninstall programs window of the Control Panel. To show them again, we follow the same steps.