Delete .DS_STORE files in current folder and all subfolders from command line on Mac - linux

Question

I understand I can use find . -name ".DS_Store" to find all the .DS_Store files in the current folder and all subfolders. But how could I delete them from command line simultaneously? I found it's really annoying to switch back and forth to all folders and delete it one by one.

Answer 1

find can do that. Just add -delete:
find . -name ".DS_Store" -delete
Extend it even further to also print their relative paths
find . -name ".DS_Store" -print -delete
For extra caution, you can exclude directories and filter only for files
find . -name ".DS_Store" -type f -delete

Answer 2

find . -name ".DS_Store" -print -delete
This will delete all the files named .DS_Store in the current path while also displaying their relative paths

Answer 3

Here is how to remove recursively the .DS_Store file
Open up Terminal
In the command line, go to the location of the folder where all files and folders are:
cd to/your/directory
Then finally, type in the below command:
find . -name '.DS_Store' -type f -delete
Press Enter
Cheers!!

Answer 4

You can also use extended globbing (**):
rm -v **/.DS_Store
in zsh, bash 4 and similar shells (if not enabled, activate by: shopt -s globstar).

Answer 5

The best way to do this cleanly is using:
find . -type f \( -name ".DS_Store" -o -name "._.DS_Store" \) -delete -print 2>&1 | grep -v "Permission denied"
This removes the files, hides "permission denied" errors (while keeping other errors), printing out a clean list of files removed.

Answer 6

All the answers above work but there is a bigger problem if one is using mac and still on mac. The described lines do delete all the DS_Store files but Finder recreates them immediately again because that is the default behaviour. You can read about how this all works here. To quote from there if you are on mac, you should remove them only if you really need:
If you don’t have a particular reason to delete these .DS_Store files (windows sharing might be a solid reason,) it’s best to leave them “as is.” There’s no performance benefit in deleting .DS_Store files. They are harmless files that don’t usually cause any problems. Remember that the .DS_Store file saves your personalized folder settings, such as your icon arrangement and column sortings. And that’s why you normally don’t want to delete them but rather HIDE them.
If you really do, there is one more way which was not mentioned here:
sudo find / -name “.DS_Store” -depth -exec rm {} \;

Answer 7

Make a new file with a text editor, copy and paste the following text into it, and save it with the ".sh" file extension, then open the file with Terminal. Make sure the text editor is actually saving the raw text and not saving the file as a Rich Text Format file or some other text file format with additional information in the file.
#!/bin/bash
echo -e "\nDrag a folder here and press the Enter or Return keys to delete all files whose names begin with a dot in its subfolders:\n"
read -p "" FOLDER
echo -e "\nThe following files will be deleted:\n"
find $FOLDER -name ".*"
echo -e "\nDelete these files? (y/n): "
read -p "" DECISION
while true
do
case $DECISION in
[yY]* ) find $FOLDER -name ".*" -delete
echo -e "\nThe files were deleted.\n"
break;;
[nN]* ) echo -e "\nAborting without file deletion.\n"
exit;;
* ) echo -e "\nAborting without file deletion.\n"
exit;;
esac
done

Answer 8

This wasn't exactly the question, but if you wanna actually zip the directory without them .DS_STORE files, this works a treat...
zip -r -X archive_name.zip folder_to_compress