Linux How To View Hidden Files

It is very easy to view hidden files on Linux. Typically files will be hidden when they are considered system files or when they are application specific profile/data directories that you wouldn’t normally want to see cluttering up your home directory. You generally would not hide them for the purpose of keeping them secret. If that were your goal you would probably want a much better solution. In Linux, a hidden file is any file that begins with a “.”.

You can view hidden files with the ls command like this:

ls -a

Specifying “-a” means that all files, including hidden ones, should be shown. You might also want to list them with details shown and with human readable sizes like this.

ls -lah