Topics | Cleaning
Finding invisible files
File Buddy will search for invisible files and folders, and display the results in a standard file list window. Some programs create invisible files that are left behind when the program is removed. Because they are not visible in the Finder, they often continue to waste valuable disk space.

To create a list of invisible items, open the Cleaning menu and choose Find Invisible Items. Once the list of invisible items is displayed, you can then examine to determine if any of them can be deleted.
Before deleting any invisible files, be sure you know who owns them. The system software uses some invisible files. There is rarely a valid reason to modify or delete those files, and doing so can cause problems.
Configuring the search

- To ignore the files used to store custom icons for folders, select the option to Ignore custom icon files.
- To ignore the ".DS_Store" files used by the Finder, select the option to Ignore directory store files.
- To ignore system files, select the option to Ignore files owned by the system.

Why are some items invisible?
Invisible files are generally created by the operating system or other software when wants to be sure the user won't move, modify, or delete them. Mac OS X uses a number of invisible files. The most common is the ".DS_Store" file used to store information about a directory.

Some software creates invisible files; some creates invisible folders. In general it's hard to tell who's doing it because the items are invisible. And as long as you continue to use the creator of an invisible item, there's no problem. But if you stop using the application which created the file, you may end up with an invisible file that's just wasting space.
Mac OS X owns a lot of files. File Buddy ignores as many as it can identify as belonging to the system, but it cannot identify all of them.
Cleaning your file system