this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2025
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Tech Support Memes

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[–] magnetosphere@fedia.io 7 points 5 days ago (3 children)

I’m such a Mac user that I don’t even get it. I am simultaneously laughing at myself and embarrassed.

[–] argh_another_username@lemmy.ca 43 points 5 days ago (1 children)

MacOS create these directories to store metadata. But because it starts with a dot, you don’t normally see it.

[–] Samskara@sh.itjust.works 11 points 5 days ago (3 children)

macOS only does this on network shares or external storage that’s formatted in neither HFS+ nor APFS, Apple‘s file system formats.

[–] TheRealKuni@piefed.social 17 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Right, so anything that might be used with other machines.

[–] Samskara@sh.itjust.works 12 points 5 days ago (1 children)

ZIP files created with macOS‘ file manager Finder can also contain DS_Store files.

Yes, the idea is to support macOS features on non native file systems.

If you want to look it up, some of this goes back to HFS, a file system with a resource fork and data fork. It allows you to do pretty cool stuff.

[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 2 points 4 days ago

Huh? I've seen it on the git untracked files list on APFS drives, I'm pretty sure.

In fact I know some companies just add it to .gitignore for that reason

[–] tophneal@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 days ago

To add to this, it does not do this on drives/folders added to the indexing exclusion list

[–] dohpaz42@lemmy.world 17 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Depending on how you interact with your computer, and when you started being a Mac user, I’m not surprised.

Starting at macOS 10.12 16A238m, Finder will not display .DS_Store files (even if you ran defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES in Terminal to show hidden system files).

Wikipedia

[–] not_IO@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 4 days ago

Apple treats it's users like children, i would feel so not respected. Yeah you bought the machine but don't worry your pretty little head with these confusing files

[–] Psythik@lemmy.world 6 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

That's cause they're hidden from you. The file does not show up on MacOS, even if you enable showing hidden files.