Home > Storage > PowerScale (Isilon) > Industry Solutions and Verticals > Media and Entertainment > PowerScale OneFS: macOS Client Performance and User Experience Optimization > .DS_Store files on network shares
The macOS Finder automatically creates .DS_Store files in every folder it accesses. This file stores metadata about how to display that directory’s contents. The reading and writing of these files can slow down performance when listing the contents of directories with high file counts.
It is possible to prevent macOS from creating .DS_Store files on network shares in macOS 10.13 and above. In the absence of a .DS_Store file, macOS will list the contents of a folder in alphanumeric order only upon initial open. Listing folders in this way has been shown to reduce the time for macOS to display the contents of directories with large numbers of files.
The following macOS CLI command prevents macOS 10.14 and higher from reading or creating .DS_Store files on network shares:
defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores -bool TRUE
After running this command, you must log out, and log in for the changes to take effect.
For more information about .DS_Store files, see the DS_Store Wikipedia article.