Oh, I have tried searching for this. Either I’m not quite getting my search terms right or it’s so obvious that no-one’s felt the need to write it down before.
Hover over the reference or value and hit ‘e’, there you can toggle visibility. I’m not sure if the website builds have it, but if you have a recent build there is a ‘Cmts.User’ layer, instead of hiding a reference / value I prefer to move them there, so they still show up on a printout (which I like to keep at hand while assembling), but not in the CAM files.
If you just want to hide one of them while working on the board layout, switch the visibility of the values or the references from the layer manager (the pane with layer names on the right, in its second tab.
When plotting to gerbers later, you can choose to use them or not too.
Option 1: in the render tap enable invisible text and use the hover technique again.
Option 2: open the footprint properties (press e on top of the footprint) and edit the text field properties. (This only works for the main reference and value fields, not for secondary fields used in the newer footprints of the library.)
Disclaimer: This screenshot and information comes from a development version. Small details might differ in the stable release.
Texts in the 3D view follow their visibility setting in the pcb. Not the Layers Manager -> Items, but in each item’s Properties. Although the KiCad version is very different nowadays, the first answer in this thread is correct also for your question. Did you ever try that?
BTW, reviving old threads isn’t recommended here. Start a new one instead in the future.