Search for (LIST) hidden Folders?

I need a way of searching for and listing Hidden folders within a directory. I'm not referring to showing hidden folders, making hidden folders visible, not reveal. I already have File Explorer "showing" hidden folders. I just need a way of searching for and listing hidden folders in File Explorer, without add-ons like voidtools.com.

That's a good question.

Using "Windows Search Syntax" you can perform all sorts of advanced searches. For example, in the search box you could include "kind:folder" and then only folders matching your criteria will be displayed. You can also select these options via the "search options" in the File Explorer GUI. What's odd is that I know that you should be able to also add "attributes:hidden" but this does not seem to work. You can tell that File Explorer recognizes these keywords because as you type "attributes:" you will see the color change indicating a recognized keyword. Likewise, once you finish and add the word "hidden" you will see that it too changes color. However, it simply does not work.

Bottom line is that I cannot tell you how to do this in File Explorer, but I can tell you how to do this from a command line.

Try this:

DIR /ADH

The /A tells dir to display items matching the specified attributes. The "D" tells it to show only directories, the "H" tells it to display items that are hidden. Combined, this tells dir to show hidden directories only. To include subdirectories, add a /S like this:

DIR /ADH /S

Finally, consider adding a /B to show the output in "bare" format without all the annoying header info like this:

DIR /ADH /S /B

I hope that this helps and that someone else can maybe provide a way to do this in File Explorer.

To be able to show a list of Hidden folders in Explorer, you might try an Explorer Search with following search item in the specific folder or drive:


This would list only Directories (whether or not their contents are Indexed or not) with the Hidden + attrib combinations shown below, but not with the System attrib.
To include any further specific Attributes, you need to extend the search term with additional Attribute values.

eg: have a look here (to see how to get the Attribute Total values).

(Hopefully, one of the Gurus can help further if there are any issues.)

Attributes as shown in Explorer and their Attribute Constants(Totals) as per the lists mentioned in the above links.

das10's results are correct, but he switched the values for HIDDEN and DIRECTORY.
Keep this in mind this if you're only looking for hidden files (subtract 16 from each result).

Here's another way to visualize the combinations:

@garlin, yes, I made a mistake whilst transcribing my notes to the post :)

@_@ ... so. . . If I go to any given directory (Documents for instance)
Just type <attribute 2 16>?
I figure thats not right since nothing showed up. Though this could mean I have no hidden folders/sub-directories

The irony is for Explorer search to display which hidden folders are found, you must have Hidden folders set to visible.
This desktop is W10, but the same principle applies to 11.

Good discussion! That worked for me. Searching with attributes:18 found all the hidden folders for me.

Why is documentation on this stuff so hard to find from Microsoft?

This is one to bookmark for sure!

Another way is to use PowerShell:
powershell (Get-ChildItem "C:\Users\GARLIN" -Hidden -Directory -Recurse).FullName

Edit: Forgot the -Recurse argument to look for sub-folders.

varxtis said:

@_@ ... so. . . If I go to any given directory (Documents for instance)
Just type <attribute 2 16>?
I figure thats not right since nothing showed up. Though this could mean I have no hidden folders/sub-directories

Click to expand...

Use this:

attributes:18

You need to add the values together, you want "attributes" (plural with an s), and you need the colon (:).

Sorry, @das10 is correct.

attributes:18 only covers DIRECTORY + HIDDEN, but excludes D+H and other combinations of READONLY and ARCHIVE.
There are 8 permutations of R/H/A, but only 4 are interesting (+H).