Tired of DS_Store getting version controlled?

Jul 28, 2018

Every Mac user has had this happen to them. You write some code, push your changes up to a repository, and that’s when it happens. There’s .DS_Store files across your repository.

Why does this file get created?

In the Apple macOS operating system, .DS_Store is a file that stores custom attributes of its containing folder, such as the position of icons or the choice of a background image.

tldr; the OS uses it to store metadata for the folder

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How can we fix this?

To fix this, you could rewrite your Git history but you’ll end up having to do this every time the .DS_Store file appears. This isn’t a great solution.

You could a new rule to your .gitignore file. This requires you to remember to add .DS_Store each time. This is a better solution but still not ideal.

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Introducing the global .gitignore

Just as the .gitignore file in each of your repositories tells what files Git should ignore, the .gitignore_global applies rules across all the repositories on your machine.

The .gitignore_global file can be created by entering the following:

git config — global core.excludesfile ~/.gitignore_globals

After you’ve created the file, you can add rules just as your would in a .gitignore file.

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Next Steps

So what now? You can start adding files that you don’t want to get committed into .gitignore_global. You can find a list of example config files based on what you’re developing here.

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Also, if you want to stop the creation of .DS_Store, you can enter the following command into your Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true

After rebooting, your OS will stop creating those pesky .DS_Store files.

To undo the above command, enter the following command into your Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores false