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Ivan's picture

What are those .DS_Store files?

If you copy a folder under OS X to a disk and then open it in Mac OS 9, Windows or Linux you will see the disk full of .DS_Store files. What are those invisible (under OS X) .DS_Store files?

They are responsible for the appearance of the folders in OS X. In other words OS X keeps in these files all the data that is about how the window looks like, it's size, position and the position of the icons, etc. In OS X they are hidden, but if you don't want them to show up under other operating systems, you can delete them using the following apps: De_DDS (direct download), DS_Store Cleaner, WinFSCleanser

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zeno's picture

hi, you can also use a (my) little application called Chop, in "Extra Mode": simply hold down simultaneously the Command, Option and Control keys while you drag & drop the desired folder (the one you want to "clean") onto the Chop application icon.

read more about it at the bottom of this page:
http://www.zenonez.com/chop/try.html

Anonymous's picture

Or on Windows you can just search for .ds_store and delete all of them.

Alexis Gallisá's picture

The real problem I have that if you have a smb share mounted it leaves .DS_Stores in every directory you touch. There should really be an option to turn off customization of folders when going through Windows shares.

augie's picture

or just put # find / -name .DS_Store -exec rm '{}' \; in your crontab and that will clean it automaticaly (works perfectly on bsd/linux and os x)

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