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I am using Emacs 27.1 (GNU Emacs 27.1 (build 1, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.24.24, cairo version 1.16.0) of 2021-03-28, modified by Debian) with "default" dired mode. There are no settings or extra packages related to dired mode in my init.el.
By default I see hidden (dotted) files and folders. Can I toggle that with a key shortcut?
What is your value of option dired-listing-switches (press M-: and type dired-listing-switches)? Customize it to use a value that does not list hidden files. In other words, this is about the switches you tell Dired to use with ls.
You can also change the switches anytime, for a given Dired buffer, by invoking dired with a prefix arg (e.g. C-u).
For example, removing a from dired-listing-switches will likely do what you want: prevent listing files whose names start with ..
Bind a key to dired-omit-mode (you may need to require dired-x first) and set dired-omit-files something like this:
(setq dired-omit-files
(rx (or (seq bol (? ".") "#") ;; emacs autosave files
(seq bol "." (not (any "."))) ;; dot-files
(seq "~" eol) ;; backup-files
(seq bol "CVS" eol) ;; CVS dirs
))
dired-omit-mode can hide files by name regexp match, or by file extension, so yes, you could use option dired-omit-files (a regexp) to have dired-omit-mode omit files whose names begin with ..