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Question

Preventing .DS_Store files on Box?

  • May 22, 2025
  • 9 replies
  • 44 views

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I often need to upload a large quantity of files/folders from my Mac to Box, and it's frustrating to end up with these hidden .DS_Store files showing up in every folder on Box. 

It happens to me every time I drag a folder or group of folders to Box. 

The folders are not empty; they often contain HTML and JS files, or sometimes just JPG and PNG images.

Is there any way to prevent this?

9 replies

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Hi Emma, 

Welcome to Box Community and thanks for posting! 

I understand that you've been uploading a large sum of files/folders in Box and to avoid uploading hidden files, I'd recommend that you start uploading per files instead of folders. 

Thank you for participating in the Community! 


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That would take forever; unfortunately, that's not a solution.


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Agreed, this is a huge problem fo Mac users.


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^^What Joe said. 

It's a complete pain to have to keep ditching those files, and uploading individual files kind of defeats a great feature of Box.


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So is this a MAC issue or a Box issue, and how do we actually get it corrected?


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Greg, good question. It appears to happen only with macs. The same thing that happens when you copy to a pc format drive.

However, I use many different file services and this is the only one that I've seen with this problem.

It seems a simple answer would be to enable the user to prevent the display or upload of hidden files. But I don't build file servers so it's easy for me to say that.


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I'm a new Box Enterprise user and this is very frustrating...if there's a solution please share.


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Same issue here. Very annoying. The recommendation to upload files rather than folders is laughable.


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Hello All,

Same issue here. 

Solution: Do a search for .DS_Store within Box browser version, select folder location, select actual files and delete. (Can delete in bulk)

Worked well for me :-)

Onward...