A program for hiding folders and files. Wise Folder Hider - a program for hiding folders and files on your computer

And although a computer is usually called personal, that is, personal, the fact remains that in most families there are several users per computer. Naturally, in such a situation, the “real” owner of the computer often has to deal with the issue of personal data privacy. Yes, surely any user will have secrets that he would prefer not to share with other people. Storing personal files on removable media is not always convenient, hiding them in a system directory is unreliable, and entrusting storage to “cloud” services is, to put it mildly, unreasonable. The solution to the problem can be a very simple, but at the same time quite effective program called Anvide Lock Folder.

With the help of this little program, secret files can be hidden anywhere without moving them, so much so that the other user will not even know about their existence. Anvide Lock Folder is free, does not require installation and is very easy to use.

In order to hide a folder, you just need to add it to the list and give it protected status, and this is achieved using a password, after which the folder and all its contents will instantly be securely hidden. But the most important thing is that after this you can close it - the folders will still remain hidden. Anvide Lock Folder can work not only with hard drives, but also with removable media.

Of course, not in the sense that you can use it to hide an entire partition or portable media - we mean the directories themselves. As you can see from the presented screenshots, the user interface of Anvide Lock Folder is extremely simple and understandable.

Let's look at how the program works using a specific example. Let's hide three folders. One of them will be located on, the second on hard drive D, and the third in the system partition and will contain working files of the Mozilla Firefox browser. After the folders have been added, and this is done using the button with the image of the “Plus” sign, select the one you need and press the button in the form of a closed lock or the F5 key. Enter the password and click “Close access” after which the directory will be securely “hidden”.

Unfortunately, the developer did not provide the ability to hide several folders at the same time, so you need to hide each folder separately; naturally, you can install one for each directory. But it is possible to enable a hint in case the password is suddenly forgotten.

But let's get back to our folders. All of them were hidden; attempts to detect them using standard means led to nothing. Yes, do you think it was possible to launch the browser after hiding the Mozilla Firefox program directory? No. When we tried to open the browser in the usual way by clicking on a shortcut on the desktop, the system displayed a message about the absence of an executable file, but when we tried to access firefox.exe directly, we received a message about accessing an inaccessible location.

As you understand, when working with program folders, and even more so system folders, you need to be extremely careful if you suddenly want to experiment with the program’s capabilities. By the way, Anvide Lock Folder can be used as a parental control tool, blocking access to certain programs, such as the browser.

And yet, before reinstalling the operating system, the developer strongly recommends unlocking all folders, since they and the files they contain may be irretrievably lost. That's all you need to know about this program. Additionally, in the settings, you can set a password to launch the program itself, as well as set the action that should be performed after opening access to the folder.

Other additional features include support for hot keys, adding folders to the list by simply dragging and dropping, working from the command line, and changing themes. To change skins, you will have to download an additional installation package with themes from the developer’s website. Like the program itself, it is completely free. In the new version of the program, the interface has been improved, the operation of the folder recovery utility has been improved, and errors have been corrected, in particular, an error leading to the appearance of the RECYCLER folder in the root directory of the disk, which is often perceived by users as a result of viruses, has been eliminated.

Wise Folder Hider is a free program that is designed to hide folders and files on your computer. When using Wise Folder Hider, you can hide files, folders or USB drives, and if necessary, you can block access to hidden data with a password. This way, hidden data will not be visible and will be password protected.

Many people have files or folders on their computer that are not intended for public viewing. Private videos or photos, confidential information, simply important data that can be lost by mistake. This is especially true if multiple users have access to the same computer.

In the Windows operating system, you can make folders or files, but any computer user can make them visible again. Therefore, to hide folders and files, special programs are used that can be used to hide folders or files and make them invisible.

To protect a folder or file with a password, you can use . You can also install using the built-in tools of the program.

In this review, we'll look at the free program Wise Folder Hider Free, which can be used to hide and protect data on your computer. The manufacturer also has a paid version of the program - Wise Folder Hider Pro.

wise folder hider download

On the download page of the official website, you should pay attention to the links where you can download this program to your computer.

To download a portable version of the program, click on the “Portable Version” link.

To download the installer for the regular version of Wise Folder Hider, you will need to click on the “for direct download” link. Do not click on the “Download” button so as not to download the program installer from another site. In this case, when installing the program on your computer, you will be asked to install other programs that are not related to the Wise Folder Hider program.

Although the Wise Folder Hider program has support for the Russian language, the program will be installed in English.

After completing the installation of the program on your computer, run the Wise Folder Hider Free program. The portable version of the program does not require installation on your computer. It is launched from the folder in which the Wise Folder Hider program is located.

After launching the Wise Folder Hider program, a window will open for entering a password for the program. Using this password you will open the program. To do this, enter your password, confirm it in the lower field, and then click on the “OK” button.

The first time this window will be opened in English, then, after turning on the Russian language, the window for entering the password will be displayed in Russian.

Attention! Remember the password well, it is in another place, you will need it to enter the program. Without this password, you will not be able to open the program and access hidden data.

Enable Russian language in Wise Folder Hider

To enable the Russian language, you will need to left-click on the “Menu” menu button, which is located in the upper right corner of the main program window. In the context menu that opens, select “Languares” and then “Russian”.

After this, the Wise Folder Hider program interface will be switched to Russian.

Changing your Wise Folder Hider password

If for some reason you need to change your password to access the Wise Folder Hider program, you can change the password using the main program window. To do this, click on the “Menu” menu button, and in the context menu select the “Change password” item.

Next, the “Change Password” window will open. In this window, you will need to first enter the old password, then enter the new password, and after that you will need to confirm the new password. After completing the password change, click on the “OK” button.

How to Hide a File in Wise Folder Hider

In order to hide a folder or file, you can simply drag this file or folder into the program window. For some reason this method did not work on my computer.

After installation, Wise Folder Hider will be integrated into the context menu. You can hide any folder or file immediately from the context menu.

You can also hide folders or files using the “Hide File” and “Hide Folder” buttons.

After clicking on the appropriate button, you will need to select the file or folder that you want to hide. In the “Browse for Folder” window, select a folder or file, and then click on the “OK” button.

After this, the file or folder will be hidden and will disappear from view. They will not be visible through Explorer either.

Hidden files and folders will be displayed in the main window of the Wise Folder Hider program.

• “Name” section - the file name and its location on the computer are displayed here.
• The “Blocked” section displays information about the access status - “No” or “Yes”.
• The “Status” section displays the status of a file, folder or USB drive - “Hidden” or “Show”.
• The “Action” section opens context menu commands for controlling the program.

You can look at hidden files if in the “Action” section you select the “Open” context menu command. The “Status” section will display the “Show” option.

In order to hide the file again, you will need to close the Wise Folder Hider program window. Immediately after this, the folder or file will be hidden again.

How to Password Protect a Folder in Wise Folder Hider

Files or folders are hidden from view, but access to them is not blocked. For greater security, access to hidden files or folders can be blocked with a password.

You can set your own password for each hidden file or folder. To do this, you will need to select the corresponding file or folder in the program window, and in the “Action” section, select the “Set password” context menu item.

After this, the “Set Password” window will open. You will need to enter the password and its confirmation in the appropriate fields, and then click on the “OK” button.

In the main window of the program, in the “Locked” section, an image of a lock and confirmation - “Yes” will appear.

If you need to, you can open a temporarily blocked file or folder.

To do this, in the “Actions” section, select the “Open” context menu item. In the window that opens, you will need to enter a password.

After this, the file or folder begins to appear in Explorer, you will have access to the necessary data. Immediately after closing the program window, files and folders will become hidden again.

How to Remove Hidden Folders from Wise Folder Hider

To delete a folder or file from the program window, in the “Action” section, in the context menu, click on the “Show folder” item. After this, the folder or file is deleted from the program window. The file or folder becomes available for further use.

How to hide a flash drive in Wise Folder Hider

Wise Folder Hider can hide a USB drive. The principle of operation of the program when hiding the contents of a flash drive is exactly the same as for folders and files.

In the main program window, click on the “Hide USB drive” button. In the “Select USB drive” window, select the flash drive that was connected to the computer via the appropriate USB connector. If only one flash drive is connected to your computer, it will be automatically selected in this window.

After selecting the USB drive, click on the “OK” button.

In the next Confirmation window, you can choose whether to lock this flash drive with a password or simply hide it.

If you click on the “No” button, then the flash drive will simply be hidden, without blocking access to the contents with a password. The flash drive itself will be visible from Explorer, but its contents will not be viewable.

After clicking on the “Yes” button, in a new window you will need to enter a password to block access to the flash drive. After entering the password, access to the disk will be denied. It will be possible to access the content located on the flash drive only after entering the password.

Viewing the contents of a USB drive and deleting it from the program occurs exactly as described earlier.

After clicking on the “Open” context menu item, the flash drive will be open for a while. After restarting the Wise Folder Hider program, the USB drive will be hidden again. If you select the “Show folder” context menu item, then blocking access to the contents of the flash drive will be disabled.

Password recovery in Wise Folder Hider

Once again, I draw your attention to the need to store passwords that you used to block access to the program, files, folders or disks. If you lose your password, you will not be able to access hidden files. The best way to store passwords is to use a password manager.

In the Wise Folder Hider program, it is possible to recover passwords for accessing the program or locked files. In this case, lost passwords can be recovered for a fee.

To do this, in the window for entering your password, you will need to click on the “Forgot your password” link. After this, you will be redirected to the program website. You can translate the page content using the built-in translator, or any online translator.

After paying and carrying out some actions, you will receive forgotten passwords to access the program and locked files.

You can also try the free option - boot your computer from LiveCD or Windows PE. After downloading, find the locked files and copy them to another drive. Then they will be available to you again.

Conclusions of the article

The free Wise Folder Hider program hides folders, files and USB drives, and also protects hidden data with a password.

Wise Folder Hider - a program for hiding folders and files (video)

The protection of your own data cannot be guaranteed even by the fact that you are the only user of the PC. Any connection to the network compromises the security of personal information. That is why it is necessary to take care of protection and use available tools designed to perform these functions. There is a special program for hiding folders, which can protect the user from theft of confidential files. It is worth remembering that the use of special tools can be used several times in order to maximize protection from intruders, competitors, etc.

The downside of such data protection services is the fact that if the program crashes, you may also lose full access and be unable to read documents. A similar problem can arise if these applications are configured incorrectly, they are uninstalled, or the computer is infected with viruses that can harm secret files and folders. In this case, all files will be irretrievably lost, without the possibility of recovery.
It must be remembered that sometimes not the most complex programs used by users regularly can help protect files and folders from being accessed and copied. Let's figure out how you can use the usual Winrar archiver to protect personal data.

Winrar archiver

WinRar is one of the most popular archivers and is installed immediately after reinstalling the Windows OS. That is why it is available on almost every computer.

For an example of data protection, we will create a folder in which we will place any files (one or several can be used). The example creates a "Secret Data" folder and places one Excel file in it.

In the dialog box that appears, there are many options, but in the situation under consideration we are only interested in one - “Set password” (we leave the name of the future archive unchanged, it can be changed).

After clicking on the specified button, a window will appear on the screen in which you will be given the opportunity to specify a password for the archive file being created. Enter the secret combination in the specified field. The password should never be forgotten, and in order not to rely on memory, it is best to write it down somewhere. In order not to make a mistake in entering the password, the program provides for repeated entry. If the combination does not match, a corresponding window will be displayed on your screen. The password should not be too simple to prevent the slightest chance of it being guessed. Use a password consisting of at least 8 characters and numbers. For reliability, you can include capital letters in the combination.

To be sure that you entered the password correctly and selected the layout, you can check the “Display password as I type” checkbox to see it on the screen instead of circles.

Also, to hide the contents of the archive being created, you need to check the “Encrypt file names” checkbox. Any archive, even one protected by a password, can be viewed without entering a password and find out what exactly is stored in it, but by activating this item, the file names will be hidden.

It is strictly not recommended to use the “Organize passwords” settings item. If you use it, any person who is physically at your computer will be able to easily open the protected archive. If you really want to achieve maximum security from third parties viewing important documents, do not use this item. At the same time, the program will also warn you about possible troubles using this setting.

After checking all the boxes and entering the password (in the example Password123), you can begin creating a password-protected archive.

Note: pay attention that in the password entry field the first letter is capitalized and if the password123 combination is entered when opening the archive, it will not be opened.

After this, just click on the “Ok” button and the archiving process will start.

If there is not too much data in the folder, this process can be completed in a second, but if there is a large amount of information, the process can drag on for several minutes (it is also the total number of files that affects the time, not the volume itself).

You will have a separate archive file in the specified folder.

After the archive has been created, you will need to open it. When you open this file, a notification will appear on the screen that you must enter a password.

If you enter an incorrect password, the program will display a window stating that the password was entered incorrectly, and viewing the data inside it is impossible. Moreover, if you check the “Encrypt file names” checkbox, even its contents will not be displayed to the user.

Just as we used the password Password123 in the example, enter it in the appropriate field.

The program will then display the content. To extract data in its entirety or a specific file separately, you need to select the required one and click on the “Extract” button (located in the icon line). Next, you only need to specify the path where the unzipped files will be located.

Remember that after creating an archive, the original ones will remain in the same place. To protect yourself from viewing secret files, this folder must be deleted. This can be done in the usual way by placing this data in the trash, but in this case you should remember to empty it. You can also select the objects to be deleted and press the Shift+Del combination, which will delete the files, bypassing the Recycle Bin, permanently.

This program will help you hide your messages from prying eyes. It's quite easy to use. After installation and first launch, the program will ask you to designate it as the default application for working with SMS. Now you just need to move the messages you want to hide to private.

KeepSafe

With the KeepSafe application, you will be able to move your intimate photos and videos to a special storage. Only you will have access to this storage using a special PIN code. The application is very easy to understand, and working with it does not raise any questions.

There is a useful function “False PIN code”. You can create a special code that, when entered, will display your storage space as empty.

In F.A.Q. a fun way to use the application is described - to create a full-length photo. These selfies are necessary to keep track of .

Vault

This program can hide not only photos and videos, but also contacts of prostitutes and SMS. Currently, SMS cannot be hidden if you have Android 5.0. But it is possible to hide messages on Facebook.

The app has a paid version that will allow you to store your hidden files in the cloud, hide the Vault icon, and alert you about hacking attempts. The cost is $2.99 ​​per month.

AppLock

This is a real harvester for hiding information on Android. With it, you can hide photos or videos, block incoming calls, prevent installation or uninstallation of applications, change settings, launch applications and much more.

When you first launch it, you create a code with which you can access storage with hidden videos, as well as change application settings. I advise you to carefully study the AppLock settings, you can find a lot of useful things for yourself.

Greetings, dear visitors to the site “Computer Smart!”

In this article, I want to introduce you to one simple, but at the same time very effective way to keep your data from prying eyes, that is, to hide your files and folders from other users.

In our age of information technology, the problem of the security of your data is very relevant, because even if you are the only user of your personal computer, this may not protect your data from various kinds of attackers who, in one way or another, can remotely (remotely) access your computer, and to your personal files and folders.

There are many programs on the Internet, paid and free, that are designed to protect files and folders on your computer, but you need to understand all of them, set the correct settings, and in some cases, if the folder hiding program is incorrectly deleted or damaged, you yourself may lose access to your folders and files. In my next articles, I will review the most simple, effective and free programs for protecting your data from unauthorized access by third parties, and in this article we will look at the simplest and most effective method - how to use the regular WinRar archiver as a program for hiding folders.

We discussed downloading, installation and basic options of the WinRar archiver in. And at the end of that article, I promised to devote a separate topic to how to use the “Set Password” option to hide your files and folders from strangers.

So how do you do this? Let's look at the following example - I will create a “Secret Data” folder on my computer (you, in turn, can create any other folder to practice hiding folders), you can put some data there (not necessarily secret, we are just we are training). For me it looks like this:

A dialog menu appears for archiving your folder, the options for which we discussed in. Now we are interested in the button on the bottom right “Set password”:

Click it and you will be taken to the following dialog menu:

Here we need to enter your password, then re-enter it in the next line (this is for your own good, so that if you make a typo in the password, you do not lose access to your folders, otherwise you need to re-enter the password, and if they do not match, then you will realize that you made a typo somewhere). Please note that when entering a password, you will not see which characters (letters and numbers) and in which layout (Russian or English) you are entering. General recommendations and rules for creating a strong password are described in. In short, for the password to be reliable and resistant to hacking, try to come up with passwords that are at least 8 characters long (preferably 10 or more), which include, in addition to lowercase letters, at least one capital letter, as well as at least one number. For more details, you can see all the recommendations for choosing. password in the article linked in the previous sentence.

To visually control your password, you can check the “Display password as you enter” checkbox, and then you will see exactly what password you are entering and in what language. Use this option if no one is looking at your password behind your back. In this case, there is no need to re-enter the password for verification, since you visually check that it was entered correctly.

I also recommend that you check the “encrypt file names” option, which hides all file names inside the archive, and if someone tries to see what file names are stored in your password-protected archive, he will not be able to do this without entering a password, not to mention already that he will not be able to view the contents of these files.

I don’t recommend using the lowest button in this menu - “Organize passwords” at all, because in this case anyone who sits down at your computer will be able to see all your passwords that you will store in this menu. WinRar honestly warns you about this when you click on this button.

So, I entered the test password “Password123″ for the archive being created (note that all passwords are sensitive to uppercase and lowercase letters, and for example the passwords “Password123″ and “password123″ are two completely different passwords because the first one has a capital letter , but not in the second one), activated the “Display password as you type” and “encrypt file names” items, and is ready to start creating an archive with a password:

Click the “OK” button, then “OK” again in the next window, and watch the archiving process:

If you have small files, the archiving process will happen almost instantly, and you may not even notice it. As a result, we receive a file next to our folder with secret data with an archive of all this data, protected by the password we specified.

When we try to see what is inside our created password-protected archive, a window immediately pops up requiring us to enter a password to open the file:

If you enter an incorrect password, an error will be generated and the data inside the archive will not open. Please note that since we activated the “encrypt file names” option when creating the archive, a person trying to open the archive will not even see which files (their names and extensions) are hidden in the archive until entering the password. If this option had not been activated during archiving, we would have seen the names of all the files and their extensions that are stored in the password-protected archive, but we would not have been able to open them and view their contents.

To open our files inside the archive, enter the correct password and click “OK”

This opens the WinRar program, inside which we see our folder, and we can look at any files inside it

If we need to unzip data to some place on our computer, then click the “Extract” button at the top, and in the window that appears, indicate the path where to extract documents from the archive. After working with your documents, do not forget to delete them so that there is no unprotected folder with these documents on your computer that anyone can access.

By the way, another important point - if you remember, next to our created archive we still have the original folder with secret documents.

This folder must be deleted so that your secret documents do not remain in open form on your computer. Please note that when you delete a folder, it is not completely removed from your computer, but placed in the Recycle Bin, which is usually located on your Windows desktop. To completely remove your file or folder from your computer, you must also empty this Recycle Bin. Find the “Trash” icon on your desktop, and right-click on it and select the “Empty Trash” menu item.

So, friends, in our article today, we have learned the easiest way to protect your personal data from unauthorized access by strangers by learning that WinRar is an excellent program for hiding folders. I hope you found this article helpful, and if you have any questions, please ask them in the comments.