Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Mac OS X: How to prevent .DS_Store file creation over network connections

This how to article describe prevent create of DS store files on network shares

Summary

This article contains advanced material intended only for those who are looking for information on .DS_Store files. If you do not already have an opinion on this matter, you can disregard this article.

Products Affected

Mac OS X Server 10.4, Mac OS X 10.4

To configure a Mac OS X user account so that .DS_Store files are not created when interacting with a remote file server using the Finder, follow the steps below.
Note: This will affect the user's interactions with SMB/CIFS, AFP, NFS, and WebDAV servers.

  1. Open the Terminal.
  2. Type:
    defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true
  3. Press Return.
  4. Restart the computer.

If you want to prevent .DS_Store file creation for other users on the same computer, log in to each user account and perform the steps above—or distribute a copy of your newly modified com.apple.desktopservices.plist file to the ~/Library/Preferences folder of other target users.

These steps do not prevent the Finder from creating .DS_Store files on the local volume. These steps do not prevent previously existing .DS_Store files from being copied to the remote file server. Please note that disabling the creation of .DS_Store files on remote file servers can cause unexpected behavior in the Finder (click here for an example).

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