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this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2025
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Am too poor to afford mac, what this mean?
It’s a folder that macOS will leave on usb sticks with meta data and stuff I think
Idk I delete it on sight.
Very cool, I'm still kinda confused why .DS_Store is the identifier for such a folder but still cool Thanks
It's a file that is never visible on Mac systems, it stands for Desktop Service. It just saves stuff like your zoom settings for the specific folder, metadata for the files in the folder etc
It is automatically generated in every single folder you access on a Mac system that isn't a native Apple file system. So for example a Windows formatted USB stick, or a network share.
It is however visible on non-mac systems as a file called ".DS_Store"
On Unix and Unix-like systems when a file or directory name starts with a
.its hidden by default.This convention is maintained in the UI for MacOS so you don't see the
.DS_Storedirectory unless you ask to show hidden files.Apparently not even then, in the case of
.DS_Store. Another comment quoted from Wikipedia:Wikipedia
On any non Mac native filesystem I think. Anything that MacOS can read but isn't the original filesystem (it used to be HFS, a long time ago, I have no idea what it is nowadays) will be peppered with those metadata files, disk, floppy, thumb drive, whatever.