9 Comments

Mixed Computing: Stop Thumbs.db and .DS_Store files from Polluting Network Shares

April 5, 2007 by in Howto with 9 Comments

thumbsdb.jpg

Running in a mixed computer environment it is annoying to deal with all the little artifacts Windows and the MacOS leave behind. My networks shares are LITTERED with Thumbs.db and .DS_Store files. Here is how you prevent EACH OS from creating these annoying bread crumbs.

Prevent the creation of Thumbs.db in Windows:

  • From “My Computer” click on the “Tools” menu item
  • Click on “Folder Options”, and the folder options dialog will appear
  • Click on the “View” tab
  • Check the “Do not cache thumbnails” option

Prevent the creation of .DS_Store files on Network volumes in MacOS:

  • Open the Terminal application from the Utilities folder which is nested in the Applications folder
  • In the newly opened terminal type (all on one line) defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true
  • Restart the computer for the change to take effect

Now this doesn’t help you deleting the files that already may exist. To accomplish that you may be interested in BlueHarvest to scrub your network of .DS_Store files and you can do a simple find and replace on Windows.

For those of you who are scare to delete system files, the Thumbs.db and .DS_Store files are strictly cosmetic on network volumes and will have almost no impact on your computing experience.


  • Russ Turley

    Thanks for this tip. I knew about the Windows setting, but the Mac command line switch I never would have come up with.

  • Hareron

    well congrats your site is now on lifehackers. Keep up the good work

  • Robby

    Is there a good way to stop the dot files from occuring.

  • http://www.christophercamps.com Christopher Camps

    This is cool but you still have to force everyone who connects to the share to obey the rules. A much cleaner way is to forbid those files from ever appearing on the server with this line in your smb.conf:

    veto files = /.DS_Store/Thumbs.db/

  • http://www.casitecenter.com www.casitecenter.com

    thank you so much
    it such use full article

  • ZB

    How to remove this files from my Mp3 player? I using Mac OS X, but this solution works only network drives. Thanks!

  • Norman Simonson

    Does XP associate anything with .db? I could not find anything, but then I have made a few adds/deletes to S/W,

    Thanks

  • Kannan

    Thanks for the great tip. But I want to know the method to stop the .DS_Store files from polluting my PCs through my flash memory that I use on both the Mac & PC.

  • Wijk

    Try this. You can also turn off the .DS_Store files using the GUI by installing Tinker Tool, http://www.bresink.com/osx/TinkerTool.html. It also provides options for lots of other hidden settings. I would compare it to Tweak UI for Windows.

Privacy Policy | About Us | Contact Us | Write for us