macOS .gitignore template

.DS_Store is written by the file manager, not by anything you ran. Opening a folder in a window is enough: the file records the view style, icon positions, sort order and window size for that directory. That is why it appears in directories nobody has edited, including asset folders somebody merely browsed while looking for a file, and why it turns up over and over after being deleted.

It is small and harmless in itself, but it produces a steady stream of pointless commits and it leaks a little information about the folder structure and view preferences of the person who committed it. On a mixed team it is also invisible to everyone else, so nobody but the macOS users notices the noise accumulating.

._* covers AppleDouble files. When a macOS file with extended attributes or a resource fork is written to a filesystem that cannot store them, the metadata is split into a companion file with that prefix. Copying a project to a memory stick and back is enough to scatter them through a tree. .AppleDouble and .LSOverride belong to the same mechanism.

The system service rules cover .Spotlight-V100, which is the search index, .fseventsd, which is the filesystem event log, .DocumentRevisions-V100, which is the versions database, and .TemporaryItems and .Trashes. These appear on volumes rather than in ordinary project folders, which is why they matter mostly for a repository stored on an external or network drive.

Network Trash Folder, Temporary Items, .AppleDB, .AppleDesktop and .apdisk are the network volume equivalents, created when a macOS machine mounts a shared drive. Icon with a trailing carriage return is the custom folder icon file, whose odd name is why the pattern needs an escape.