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A few weeks ago, I did a Screencast about my free WordPress theme, WicketPixie. The reason why I’m bringing this up, is that the first time I zipped all the files up on my Mac to put online, people were complaining. They didn’t know what the .DS_Store files were. I had forgotten that if you have a Mac, you’ve probably never seen these files.

The DS stands for Desktop Services. These files, on a Mac, are invisible. They are planted inside directories or folders in the Finder on the Mac. In these files are stored preferences. For instance, if I want to view a folder in the Finder in a certain way so I change it. Once I save it, a hidden .DS_Store file is created to remember that. They are harmless, and won’t hurt anything by being there.

For Windows users, you may have seen Desktop.ini files sitting within your Explorer folder windows. There sits information about that folder, much like the .DS_Store files. If you’ve ever downloaded something and later seen one of these files, you may have been worried as to whether you need them or not. They are safe to delete. The next time you change your preferences, a new one will be created.

Now, if you want to zip up files and not include the .DS_Store files, I’ve only found one affordable program to help you. CleanArchiver is very simple to use, and is open-source. Highly affordable, right? CleanArchiver has the ability not to include system files peculiar to Mac OS X such as .DS_Store and custom icon file in your archive. Your archive will always be clean when it’s put onto other operating systems.

Another thing I have noticed is that it was a frustration to me dealing with these .DS_Store files. As I was browsing my Windows machine from Mac OS X, it would plant the .DS_Store file on that machine. The Mac doesn’t realize that I was browsing on a Windows machine. It just ‘planted’ the .DS_Store files into the Windows machine. You can, however, easily make sure that Windows machines will automatically not allow these files to be dropped into their system.

Now you have some basic information about things like .DS_Store files, Desktop.ini files, and hey… even those annoying thumbs.db files. They can always be deleted safely.

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