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At work our largely shared fileserver is filled with .DS_store preferences from various users. We clean these files now and then, but still it happens constantly that I run into a folder where someone has opened folders in the list view, or has changed the view to column view, and these settings have been saved in the .DS_store file and are directly applied to my folder view.

Is there a way where I can tell OSX to ignore all .DS_store view preferences when browsing through specific folders?

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It might be better to try persuade it not to write them in the first place...

  1. Open Terminal.
  2. Execute this command: defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true
  3. Either restart the computer or log out and back in to the user account.

From Mac OS X v10.4 and later: How to prevent .DS_Store file creation over network connections which apparently has never been superseded or indeed maintained for a long time, but is still the recommended way.

You might also find this interesting - Got a Mac? Prevent OPSEC leakage by cleaning hidden OS X files from USB drives The recommended freeware from that report CleanMyDrive claims to be able to handle network volumes too [I'm just testing it myself so have no results as yet, but reviews are good on the app store]

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  • That would be better, but is not possible in this case. The network is shared by a large amount of OSX machines. I'm asking specifically for a client-side solution to ignore the files.
    – dubbelj
    Nov 19, 2014 at 12:00
  • judging by the number of hits you get on Google for 'disabling creation' vs 'ignoring' & an identical question on SE from a year ago with no solution, I'm guessing it can't be done that way. Looks like prevention will be better than cure.
    – Tetsujin
    Nov 19, 2014 at 12:09
  • Yup, i know there's not an easy to find solution. Hence my question here. Thanks for you efforts though.
    – dubbelj
    Nov 19, 2014 at 13:18

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