.DS_store Icons

I find on my mac I am getting the following " .DS_store " I have it as an icon on my desktop, I also have that as filenames in some of my folders, Can anyone tell me what this file is, or what its for.
Thanks
M

Download and run the free application TinkerTool (not "TinkerTool System"), select the Finder tab, and uncheck the box labeled Show hidden and system files. Then click Relaunch Finder.

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Confused about Install procedure on new Mac Pro

With 10.4 on my old G4 I would put the DVD in, hit install and the machine would restart. The installer could come up and I could select the disk utility and do a repair disk and disk permissions from the install disk before my actual install. With my Mac Pro, when I hit install from the disk it goes right into the installation process. I began that process thinking it would first restart the machine and give me a choice to access the disc utility first, but it looked like it was going straight to install. So I stopped the dang thing quickly. Now I've got this .DS_Store icon on my desktop that won't go away. A few questions...
1. How do I get to Disc Utility on the boot DVD and do maintenance?
2. How do I get rid of the dang .DS_Store icon on my desktop?
3. I'm experiencing quirky behavior on my Mac Pro, like jitters in Mail sometimes when I just open and start to scroll through notes in my inbox, slow opening of windows, etc., and my pointer suddenly going from the center of the screen to up to the top of the screen for no apparent reason. What is the best recommended repair and maintenance third-party utility for 10.6.3 Snow Leopard, to keep my Mac running optimally? I used to use SOCKS and Tech Tool Pro for 10.4.
Thank you so much for any help you can give me.
Leonard

Arch,
Every time I open Mail all the mail messages jitter for about 2 seconds, and my pointer, several times during the day, will jump up from, say, the middle of the screen to the top of the screen and I have to move it down. Odd. But it doesn't seem to be affected by how long I'm on the machine, or whether I just turn it on or whatever. Completely random. Plus, sometimes other drives won't open quickly... I mean I have another SATA drive that when I click on it, it won't open for about 6 or 7 seconds. The drive IS about 2 years old, it could be the drive, but it opened quickly on my old machine. That seems odd for a supposed speed demon like the Mac Pro. So I just wanted to run the Disk Utility from the install disk to try and see if that would stop these small issues. I brought a couple of apps over from my old machine. Photoshop CS and InDesign CS. I realize they aren't running optimum, and the new versions are native. But I can't afford them right now and I had several people tell me they will work, just slower. Is it just wrong to use them at all? These people are having no problems with them like I'm having. I did not use Migration Assistant. I'm using the mouse that came with my computer, with the scroll button top forward center. Yes, my only desire was to use the install disk to repair the disk as I thought a damaged disk would not repair itself as well as the install disk would. Would just a basic install work and get rid of these ghost icons?
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Self-created invisible system file not found via Finder's Find command

I need to see what is being created on my hard disk. To achieve that, I create a test file, call it .new in TextEdit, remove the hidden .rtf extension, and place it in one of the folders in /Library/Application Support. Then, I use Finders Find command, and ask to search This Mac, Created date: today, System files are included, File visibility Visible or Invisible, leaving the input field (for file contents or name) blank. The newly created file isn't found. I type its name into the input field, with the same result. I change its name to .new.plist . Same result. Suspecting that "System files" acutally means system files and doesn't include the Library on the top level, I place that same item in /System/Library/PodcastProducer. Same result.
Seriously, this is entirely incomprehensible. The Find command obviously doesn't do what it says it does. Could anyone tell me how to get it to, or name some alternative?
Thanks a lot.

Actually you CAN get ressults for .whatever files and folders. I created a saved search for my home folder with the criterion of "File visibility::Invisible Items" and then "None of the following are true::Name contains" DS_Store, Icon or localized. The result is a list of 65 invisible items including things such as the files /Users/francine/Library/Preferences/ByHost/.GlobalPreferences.0017f20dca84.plis t (a dot file), /Users/francine/Library/Preferences/com.freeverse.5012 (something with the invisible flag set), the dot folder /Users/francine/.fontconfig, and many others of all of these types. I thought it was interesting that lots of them were inside the ~/Library folder, even though I did NOT specify including system files.
I don't know why the original poster can't get Spotlight, using the the Command-f method, to display dot files. When I was setting my own invisible items search up I did manage to crash the Finder once, so it may be that the query for invisible items is buggy. Here's the Raw Query:
(true) && (((kMDItemFSInvisible = 1) && (!((kMDItemDisplayName = "\DS_Store"cd) || (kMDItemDisplayName = "\Icon"cd) || (kMDItemDisplayName = "\localized"cd)))))
If you go to a folder, do Command-f, then change from the default "Kind" to "Raw Query" and paste the above in as the query, you ought to get all the invisible files and folders, except the .DS_Store, Icon and localized files (of which there are likely hundreds of 'em in your home folder).
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

Help! need help w/ terminal...

my friend borrowed my computer to try and rip videos from their ipod to my computer then move them to another ipod...anyway, she typed something in terminal and now i have a "network", "servers", ".DS_Store" icons on my desktop and seemingly everywhere else...all my other icons are dim...how can i fix this?
powerbook g4 Mac OS X (10.4.9)

used another post by another user.

Where did all these other Folders come from?

Guys,
Just opened up my Mac HD to find all these extra Folders in there - and I have no idea where they came from!
Also, I have a .DS_Store Icon on my desktop.
Confused as heck! What have I done?

Woops! My stupidity, I did download a hidden file widget.
Thanks petermac87

.DS_store won't let me move files from one external drive to another

I am trying to move some music files from one external harddrive to another. They are both connected to my mac mini.
In the "from" harddrive I have a folder with a bunch of music files in it and it also has a new file in it called DS_store. When I open this folder and select all, it naturally selects all of my music files and this DS_store file. When I try to drag all of this to the "destination" harddrive I open the folder that I want to drag them to which already has some music and it has the DS_store file too, it won't let me drag the files to it   It says something like there is already a DS_store file there. So I tried deleting that file from each external drive and it just reappears.
If I create an empty folder in the destination drive, I can drag all of the files to it. The problem is I want the new files to be in the same folder with the older files.
In addition there are a few other ghost type files that have shown up too.
Any suggestions would be welcome. Thanks.

If you're copying from a FAT-formatted volume, do as below.
Back up all data.
Select the text on the line below by dragging across it. Don't include the blank space at the end of the line. Only the text should be highlighted.
dot_clean -m
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.
Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the page that opens.
Now switch to the Finder and and select the icon of the FAT volume. Drag into the Terminal window. More text will be added to what you entered.
Click in the Terminal window to activate it, then press return.
The command may take a noticeable amount of time to run. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign (“$”) to appear. Then quit Terminal and try the copy again.

How do I create a new .DS_Store file for the Desktop?

I have an account, in this case it is the System Administrator account (which I seldom use), where the Desktop icons all scrunch up to the right side of the screen. I can re-arrange them, but when I log out and sign back on, the icons are shifted back to the right side of the screen. I thought perhaps I had a corrupted .DS_Store file that needed to be removed. However, it turns out that I can find no .DS_Store file to remove for this account. Finder just doesn't seem to be able to create a new one. I'm not sure how or when the old one disappeared.
Any suggestions how I can get the Finder or something else to create a new .DS_Store for the Desktop so that icons will stay put?

I think I found an answer (not a solution) to my problem. Consulting with Apple Support, there is no way for the System Administrator's desktop to "remember" the positions of icons from one session to the next. They will always move to the right-hand side of the screen when you log back in. Apparently this is a change that occurred with OS 10.6.4. No reason by Apple given for the change, nor is it readily apparent to me why the Desktop or Finder in the System Admin account should work any differently than in any other account. Might simply be an oversight or a bug.
If anybody has a fix, I would appreciate learning about it.

"always open in icon view" is ALWAYS on.I've

I've just reinstalled leopard on my imac as i felt it had built up with rubbish and was slowing things down, anyway.....
When i now open my Macintosh HD, it always appears in icon view. I click show view options, deselect "always open in icon view" which then changes to "always open in column view"(which is what i want) and close the view options. Then once i restart my mac, its changed back to open in icon view.
Now, i've researched the fact and i see that people have had the same trouble but all the things they suggest don't work for me.
I've trashed DS_Store files, finder preferences, and its still not working for me.
its just annoying to have to keep changing the view i want ALL the time. Its not exactly asking for the world, and it does as it should on my macbook, so i know its possible, i just want it to work on my imac!
Does anyone have any ideas of what to try?

Welcome to the Most...Annoying...Finder...Bug...Ever. Trashing .DS_Store files doesn't fix this because the Leopard Finder doesn't rely on these files any more for the view style. For the technically-minded, here is a breakdown of the binary format of the .DS_Store file.
Where this bug gets really annoying is if you have multiple folders inside a higher level folder and you open the top-most folder in a certain view style, every folder below that one that you open will open in the same view as the top-most folder AND if you then close that folder and open...say the Macintosh HD icon, it switches that to the view of the folder that you just closed -seemingly at random!
Then there's this little gem -see if you have this one. Create a folder on your desktop. Create some folders inside the one you just created -they can be empty for this excercise. Now open one of them and leave it open. Now, go back the top level folder and delete, 'Opt-Delete', the folder that you just opened. The folder will be moved to the Trash and...wait for it...the window of the folder that you just moved to the Trash now displays the contents of the window that it was deleted from! That's right. Two folders open at the same time displaying the same contents. That's not supposed to happen.
Then there's the bit where the files on the desktop refuse to be placed in a different location from the one where they were originally created or they arrange themselves on the right hand side of the Desktop in name order. If you move them and reboot or logout and login again, the files are right back where the were first created. It is even stranger in that if you delete a file or folder from the Desktop then reboot or logout and login again, then recreate the file in a different location on the Desktop, but with the exact same name, on the next reboot or logout and login, the file is right back where the original one was deleted from. Very strange.
Somewhere I read a post that said if you turned on the invisible files setting for the Finder and then turned it off again that the problem disappeared. I tried that with no positive results. So the mystery continues.

Backup file appears with a PC icon and won't open in mac os 9.2

Hi, I have a green imac powerpc at home and need to open some old files backed up on an external hard disk.
The external hard disk is fat32 and was formatted by a pc.
unfortunately the files I need appear as PC files with a blue PC icon, but I'm sure they are Ready, Set & Go files created
on mac os 9.2. Any help is appreciated.

There is a classic discussion.
https://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os/classic_mac_os?view=discussions
I shall try to find a friend with Tiger this weekend, hope it helps.
Fyi: The Mac OS X system needs to be Tiger or newer.
You may try this. I tried it long ago, but kind of forget the details.
Be sure to format the usb stick on a Mac with a Mac OS file system HFS+.
Create several files with Ready, Set & Go files created. Some empty. Some with data. etc.
Copy these to the usb stick with a Mac Format.
Copy to a Tiger or newer system.
Create a dos formated usb stick.
Copy good files to the dos usb stick. This splits the files into a data and resource fork. This is a Tiger innovation.
Now you need to replace the data fork with the other data fork. The data fork has the normal name. The resource fork starts with ._
You will have to see hidden files.
turn off hidden.
Copy the files back to to a usb HFS+ formated flash drive. This puts the files back together.
I suggest you bring along a coy of Ready, Set & Go. If your friend has classic installed, You can test there. Or, bring you computer along. You may need to do this more than once.
Macintosh-HD -> Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal
# Show hidden files & folders in finder
# Just copy the the line starting with defaults into the terminal. Press return to run.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE   ;killall Finder
# Normal display. Hide hidden files & folders in finder
# Just copy the the line starting with defaults into the terminal
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE ;killall Finder
The finder comes right back.
See: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4070684?start=15&tstart=0
Mac OS files may contain two parts: Data & Resource. On HFS+ disks you see only one file. On Dos disks, you see two files. One file is visible. One is hidden. Turns out I have classic installed on my system. The finder application contains data & resource forks.
# My Dos flash drive is DOS formatted
# Previously, I copied the Classic finder to the Dos flash drive.
mac $ pwd
/Volumes/dos/seeparts
mac $ ls -lah
total 4848
drwxrwxrwx   1 mac staff       8K Mar 15 13:51 ./
drwxrwxrwx   1 mac staff      16K Mar 15 13:50 ../
-rwxrwxrwx   1 mac staff       6K Mar 15 13:51 .DS_Store*
-rwxrwxrwx   1 mac staff     512K Mar 15 13:50 ._Finder*
-rwxrwxrwx   1 mac staff       1M May 29 2001 Finder*
# Here is the file on my startup disk.
mac $ ls -lah /System\ Folder-current/Finder
-rwxrwxr-x   1 root admin       1M May 29 2001 /System Folder-current/Finder*
# If you know this clever method, you can see the resource fork.
# Notice the ending /rsrc!
mac $ ls -lah /System\ Folder-current/Finder/rsrc
-rwxrwxr-x   1 root admin    512K May 29 2001 /System Folder-current/Finder/rsrc*
mac $

Photoshop CS6 icons sometimes do not appear on Macintosh

Yes, this is a question.
I've been using my trial of Photoshop CS6 Extended for 10 days now. I have run into a peculiar problem - when saving a file Photoshop does not display any sort of icon. No thumbnail, no generic, nothing. It's not a huge problem, I can always open the image but not by double-clicking on the icon: it's just not there.
I'm wondering if anyone else has had this problem and if there is a resolution to it - or is it just a bug? I didn't have this problem with the beta version and I've repaired all permissions on my hard drive to see if that was the problem.
Any help would be appreciated.
Regards,
Clinton

Clinton, I'm experiencing what sounds like the identical problem (running Mac OSX 10.6.8) ...
- It happens with .jpg, .png, .tif,.psd and Photoshop .pdf files - and therefore is not related to alpha channels
- No other app on any of the Macs in our shop, running either Snow Leopard and Lion has - or has ever had - this problem
- Re-opening the files and re-saving in the same format using any other graphics utility (Preview, Graphic Converter, AND Photoshop CS4! creates the icon successfully.
- Deleting the .DS_Store files for any given directory does not eliminate the problem
- Repairing disk permissions does not eliminate the problem
Only thing I haven't tried yet is rebuilding the entire volume in DiskWarrior - that is next.
I created 7 identical copies of the same stock photo in different file formats (.tif, .jpg, png, psd, .pdf) - Only #6 (re-opened in Preview and re-saved) and #7 (saved in Illustrator CS6) are displaying file icons.
Would love some real help from Adobe on this...
UPDATE TO THIS POST
Deleting the .DS_Store files for directory and restart appears to solve the problem...
Message was edited by: [email protected]

All my icons have turned brighter?!??

Hello,
All my icons, in Icon view, have become lighter, and I have no idea why. The text below the icons is still the same brightness level, as is the desktop backgrounds, it's only the icons that are lighter. The only icons that have not changed are my hard drive icons.
I have tried recreating the icons (with Pic2Icon and CoocoThumbX) and nothing. I opened a folder of all JPGs and set the view options to show a preview, no difference. When I set to list view, all the icons appear fine (right color, brightness). When I set to column view, icons appear light again, but when I select a file, in the preview, the icon looks fine.
There are also a flurry of .DS_Store files popping up, and my HD has a bunch of new folders, or folders I assume used to be hidden.
The only recent change was I was trying out BchunkerFE, which is a GUI of BinChunker, a utility to convert .bins to .iso. Didn't work, but I'm wondering if that's the issue. Have already dumped the program in the trash.
I imagine there has to be some command line trick to affect all directories view options that's beyond the little GUI view options. Or I'm a moron and missed something stupid obvious. I do photo work and live and die by these thumbs, so any help would be awesome. Any ideas?

[Terminal commands for hiding/unhiding invisible files|http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=9118092#9118092]
[What Should Be Invisible Isn't|http://www.pinkmutant.com/articles/toovisible.html]
I don't think this will address the brighter icons issue though.
Some general things to try and report back on:
Restart the computer.
Restart the computer into safe mode by holding down the shift key at startup. Are things still wrong?
Restart the computer again normally. If Safe Mode worked are they bad again?
Start the computer in a different account.
Message was edited by: Limnos

Icon in Apps folder not displaying correctly

Hi there,
It seems that whenever I download and install a new program into my Applications folder, the icon appears incorrectly in Grid View. For example, I just downloaded a program called Dragster, installed it and dragged it into my Applications folder. However now, when I click on 'Applications' on the dock, the icon for Dragster is white with a circle and line through it (similar to a non-smoking type of sign).
If I drag the icon to the Desktop and then back into Applications again, the icon appears as normal - the correct icon for that folder. Why does this happen? Why does the icon display incorrectly when I drag the program directly to my Applications folder... this is what I am supposed to do isn't it (am a reasonably new mac user)?
Thanks in advance.
Nicola
P.S. I have posted this question previously but unfortunately didn't find an answer :o(

Finder attributes are stored in an invisible file called .DS_Store, which gets created in every folder opened in Finder. I can't explain why it works the second time you drag it there and not the first time. But you might try deleting that file.
You can do this using Terminal commands. If you are not a Unix guru, you can download a great free utility called TinkerTool.
http://www.bresink.de/osx/TinkerTool.html
On the program's Finder screen, check the box to show hidden files, then relaunch Finder. Locate the .DS_Store file in the Applications folder and drag it to the Trash to delete. Relaunch Finder again. See of the problem still recurs.

SInce i installed Lion, my desktop icons are lining up like regimented Windows icons! how do i get them to stay where i put them, like they used to do? thanks! ellen

SInce i installed Lion, my desktop icons are lining up like regimented Windows icons!
how do i get them to stay where i put them, like they used to do?
thanks!
ellen

In that case, there may be a problem with your Finder preferences or window settings.
Try removing these files, then restarting:
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist
~/Desktop/.DS_Store
Let me know if you're not sure how to do that.

Rogue desktop icons

Once in a while, for no apparent reason, All my desktop icons snap to grid on the right half of the screen. I find them there at startup., and I have to painstakingly reposition them where I want.
This is in spite of the fact that in the Finder's View menu > Show View Options > "None" was selected.
It was suggested that I should delete the .DS_Store file of the Desktop. It is an invisible file which I accessed and deleted via Disk Warrior, but this promising tip did not work.
I wonder if a gifted hacker out there would know of a way to force my desktop icons to remain where I placed them, and I am curious to find out if I am the only one with this problem.
I use an Intel Mac mini 3,1 2.26 GHz 2Gb RAM, running Snow Leopard.
Thank you.

From a recent article in MacFixit:
Performance tip: Keep the Desktop clutter-free (empty, if possible)
Mac OS X's Desktop is the de facto location for downloaded files, and for many users, in-progress works that will either be organized later or deleted altogether. The desktop can also be gluttonous, however, becoming a catch-all for files that linger indefinitely.
Unfortunately -- aside from the effect of disarray it creates -- keeping dozens or hundreds of files on the Desktop can significantly degrade performance. Not necessarily because the system is sluggish with regard to rendering the icons on the desktop and storing them in memory persistently (which may be true in some cases), but more likely because keeping an excessive number of items on the Desktop can cause the windowserver process to generate reams of logfiles, which obviously draws resources away from other system tasks.
As such, keeping as few items as possible on the Desktop prove a surprisingly effective performance boon. Even creating a single folder on your Desktop and placing all current and future clutter inside, then logging out and back in can provide an immediately noticeable speed boost -- particularly for the Finder.

Remove .DS_Store files

On my iMac ios 10.10.1 I now have a Desk-Top Icon and a Finder Application file for .DS_Store. Both show in a faded text. Tried to put in the trash, but they just pop right up. They are not hurting anything that I can tell, but I want them gone. Any thoughts........

You're not understanding what those files are all about. Those previously HIDDEN files (indicated by the leading period) are now hidden again, they're not gone. Can't explain why they were made visible.
FYI, every time you open a folder that hidden file, which contains how the folder view settings and other things are set, are updated, or, if the folder was never opened, then it's created. BTW, I tested Niel's script and it works here. What did or didn't happen when you ran it in AppleScript Editor?
27" i7 iMac (Mid 2011) refurb, OS X Yo (10.10.1), Mavs, ML & SL, G4 450 MP w/10.5 & 9.2.2

.DS_store Icons

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