How do you delete .DS_Store files?

Question

How do you delete .DS_Store files?

This all arose when I used Audacity the first time - it crashed 40 minutes into recording a 45-minute radio programme playing in Safari. I hastily relaunched, grabbed the last 5 minutes and Saved As.. MP3 to iTunes.

I then went online to learn how to recover the first 40 minutes, which were sitting in usr/tmp/audacity1.2-xxxx folder - hundreds of 1MB .au files. Unfortunately, Audacity wouldn't Import.. from this invisible folder, so I moved it to my Documents folder instead. However, when I tried to save the project I got loads of error messages that Audacity couldn't find files (in spite of the fact that I'd changed its default directory in Preferences to the new location).

So I patiently imported a few score .au files at a time and Saved As.. MP3s to iTunes, & didn't bother trying to save the Audacity project itself.

To cut a long story short, I now have a .DS_Store file on my desktop (which is where I would get Audacity to Save As MP3 before dragging them to iTunes). I've tried deleting it, but every time it simply reappears on the desktop. I cannot get rid of it. Any advice?

iMac G5 17" 1.5Gb RAM, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on May 30, 2011 3:59 AM

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Answer 1

May 30, 2011 4:06 AM in response to christopher rigby1

Oh wait. I think I know what's happened. In order to move the usr/tmp/audacity1.2-xxxx folder to Documents (so that Audacity could see it), I followed online advice to enter this in Terminal :

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE

killall Finder

Should I re-enter the same thing, but this time FALSE? (I suspect the .DS_Store in question is the desktop's own!, which of course would have been invisible before.)

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Answer 2

roam

Level 6

13,637 points

May 30, 2011 4:17 AM in response to christopher rigby1

I see you have worked it out. Yes FALSE will reverse it.

Message was edited by: roam

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Answer 3

Jun 1, 2011 3:27 AM in response to roam

I got your first reply by email, roam. To answer your Audacity point :

1. I went online to see how to recover Audacity project files after a crash, and discovered that they are located in one of the Mac 'invisible' folders (usr/tmp)

2. I tried to use Audacity to Import those files, but Audacity couldn't "see" them (why on earth does Audacity put its project files into an invisible folder making it impossible to recover them??)

3. I then used Terminal to show all invisible files, but Audacity STILL couldn't see them when I tried to Import them!!

4. I then moved the folder from /tmp to my Documents folder so that Audacity could see them.

5. I then used Audacity to try to open the project, but got all kinds of "Couldn't find file..." messages

6. I then changed Audacity's Preferences / Directories to point to where the moved folder was, in Documents

7. Audacity then gave me a whole different set of "Couldn't find file..." messages

At this point, I came to the conclusion that Audacity is the least user-friendly, most opaque, app in history. I've since been importing the recovered files a batch at a time, laboriously cutting and pasting them into a single track (another thing - why does Audacity save its files as 1MB 10-second snips? I'd prefer to change that to - for example - 30-second 3MB snips, so that there are fewer to have to work with), then saving each segment as an MP3, which will be joined in iTunes when I've finally finished. Bottom line : I'm going to avoid Audacity in future unless there is no alternative.

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Answer 4

roam

Level 6

13,637 points

Jun 1, 2011 4:06 AM in response to christopher rigby1

Hi Chris

I find Audacity's temporary directory to be

/private/tmp/audacity1.2-one'sUsername

which Audacity Preferences show as

/tmp/audacity1.2-one'sUsername

Are those Audacity 1Mb files hidden, that is, do they have the prepended . (dot) as the first character of their filename, the magic character that makes them invisible, the same as in .DS_Store?

As an aside in Finder, you can navigate to system folders with Finder > Go > Go to Folder and type or paste in the path. That will take you places you can't normally see in Finder but you need to know the destination to start with. Using this can sometimes be easier than digging down using Terminal.

But I agree, it is a pretty nerdy place for Audacity to put its temporary files and not make it easy to access them from the Desktop application when a recovery is required.

Perhaps the 'couldn't find file' message is one that occurs with files that are prepended with a dot. If you remove that yourself, the application might be able to open them normally. Perhaps worth a try if there are heaps of them to stitch together.

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Answer 5

Jun 1, 2011 5:17 AM in response to roam

Hi

Thanks for the reply. No, the Audacity files don't begin with a dot, but as they are in the /usr/tmp folder, they can't be navigated to in a dialogue box. Yes, I can Go To Folder in Finder, but Audacity cannot see them when I use the Import dialogue.

It's pretty clear from the look of the Audacity interface that it was designed for Windows and just can't handle Mac (or at least, OS X) well at all.

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