Automatically hide files with certain extension in Windows

Question

Is it possible for Windows to automatically hide files with a certain extension?

Let's say some program generates a set of files (I cant alter the sources of the program), and I would like some of these files to be recognized by the system by their extension and automatically set hidden – is it possible?

Answer 1

You can create a program (possibly running as a service) that will monitor changes in a given directory. Then, whenever it recognizes a change, it can decide whether to make that file hidden or not. See Obtaining Directory Change Notifications.

Making a file hidden is quite simple - just use SetFileAttribute.

Answer 2

Hiding a file is not the property of OS. Its the properties of the file which makes it visible or hidden and I don't think windows support hiding files by extension. But you can write your own program which will take the extension and then it will apply

 "attrib +h *.<ur_extension>" 

on the folder and it will hide all the files of that extension. You can create a simple vb script and then execute it after the previous program has ended.

Answer 3

Windows 7 and onwards:

• create a new Library in Explorer
• collect all the folders you need into the Library
• Set view options for the Library
• In the top-right search field, type "type:=NOT *.ext (replace ext with extension)
• (you will get a rolled up view of the search results)
• expand each group of results
• click on "Save Search", and save the file
• (you get a multiple-folder search in which files with some extension are omitted in the results)
• DOWNSIDE: the results are hard grouped by date; you can still sort the files by some criteria, but you won't be able to group them by something else

Answer 4

Windows [7 x64] supports hiding files by extension. At least it's able to do so, because: all .INI files are created as "hidden". And it's p to the user if he wants to see hidden files or not. I already hide "hidden" folders and files [so I don't get angered by the multiple desktop.ini files] and I would like to add to them now all those future .SFK files