How to hide a file or folder in macOS Finder

I was slightly annoyed by macOS putting a Public folder in my home folder, with no reason.

I couldn’t delete it as it’s a system folder.

So I found out a way to hide it instead.

Open Terminal and run chflags hidden followed by the path:

chflags hidden ~/Public

Finder hides the item immediately. If it remains visible, relaunch Finder or press Command-Shift-Period to check whether Finder is currently showing hidden files.

To make the item visible again, run:

chflags nohidden ~/Public

Quote paths that contain spaces, for example chflags hidden "$HOME/My Folder".