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OS X has a bad habit. On any Windows server I have write access on, it likes to leave stupid little hidden files scattered around. The big offender is .DS_Store, which is in every friggin' directory I touch at all. If I copy or mannipulate files in directories it creates little hidden files with the same names. These files are all probably settings or whatever.

 

Is there any way to control this behavior? I don't care if I don't retain settings between sessions, I just don't want these files laying around.

OS X has a bad habit. On any Windows server I have write access on, it likes to leave stupid little hidden files scattered around. The big offender is .DS_Store, which is in every friggin' directory I touch at all. If I copy or mannipulate files in directories it creates little hidden files with the same names. These files are all probably settings or whatever.

 

Is there any way to control this behavior? I don't care if I don't retain settings between sessions, I just don't want these files laying around.

 

 

Prevent .DS_Store file creation on network volumes, in your Terminal:

 

sudo defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true

 

not sure if there is an equivelent for removable drives or by filesystem -- ie don't write on NTFS drives

Windows also splatters "thumbs.db" and "desktop.ini" around.

 

All operating systems do that; there is little or nothing you can do about them.

OS X is really bad with it though. I mean yeah, Windows has thumbs.db and desktop.ini. Two files. In OS X, it creates hidden files for *any* file modified. I had some directories where they would literally have 2x the number of files because of these things, and when you are dealing with 100 files, that's now 200 files, instead of Windows' 102. I don't like having files hidden from me so I usually set Windows up to show me hidden files, and I don't mind 2 extra files. I mind 100 extra files.

 

I gave that other command a shot, I'll be seeing how it does over the next couple of days when I'm back on the Mac.

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