Global option in Preferences to ignore .DS_Store

The feature request

Macs create invisible files named .DS_Store in every folder, and these files are automatically updated on an ongoing basis.

The problem: The .DS_Store files are rarely, if ever, useful to anyone. They primarily exist as clutter in every folder of every repo created by Mac users, unless they’re dealt with manually by creating another clutter file called .gitignore. I suspect there are not many cases where .DS_Store files need to be archived or continually updated on GitHub. From the looks of it, most people don’t want .DS_Store files cluttering their repos, yet no clear, straightforward solution exists to deal with them elegantly.

Proposed solution

Create a global option in the GitHub Desktop Preferences menu to ignore .DS_Store files. Ideally this would be turned on by default.

Additional context

Here’s an example of a repo in which I haven’t changed any files, but GitHub Desktop think I need to push changes to origin. The only changes here are the automatic updates that have been made to the invisible .DS_Store files.

[steveward]

It looks like there may be an issue with the Ignore All functionality for dotfiles – you should see it on other files. I’ll investigate what’s causing that and open an issue, but you can also workaround that by directly editing the .gitignore from Repository > Repository Settings > Ignored Files.

[chadagreene]

Thanks @steveward, I’ll give that a shot!