Hidden Mac Files on External Drives: Safe to Delete?
Low riskSystem & external drivesUpdated
- Locations
/Volumes/<drive>/.Spotlight-V100/Volumes/<drive>/.fseventsd/Volumes/<drive>/.Trashes/Volumes/<drive>/.TemporaryItems/Volumes/<drive>/.DocumentRevisions-V100/Volumes/<drive>/.apdisk/Volumes/<drive>/.DS_Store
- Risk level
- Low riskRebuilt automatically by macOS or the app that made it. Freshist selects these for you — you still see every item before anything moves.
- Selected by default
- Yes (after you scan a drive)
- What Freshist does
- Only scanned when you choose “External Drive…” in Clean and pick a drive. Found items move to the Trash, so you can undo.
- In the app
- Clean → External Drive Metadata — “macOS index & metadata left on external drives (.Spotlight, .fseventsd, .DS_Store) — rebuilt when you reconnect the drive.”
From Freshist's own cleaning rules — the same catalog the app uses.
What macOS leaves on external drives
When you connect a drive, macOS treats it like any other volume: it indexes it for Spotlight, tracks changes to its files, gives it its own Trash and stores Finder settings for its folders. All of that lives in hidden items at the top of the drive (and .DS_Store files in each folder you open). Press Command-Shift-Period in Finder to show them.
| Item | What it is | After deleting |
|---|---|---|
.Spotlight-V100 | Spotlight index for the drive | Rebuilt when the drive is next indexed |
.fseventsd | Log of file changes, used by backup tools | Recreated; backup apps may do a full scan of the drive |
.Trashes | The drive's own Trash | Files trashed from this drive are gone for good |
.TemporaryItems | Temporary files apps wrote to the drive | Recreated when needed |
.DocumentRevisions-V100 | Saved versions of documents stored on the drive | Older versions (File → Revert To) are lost |
.apdisk | Disk sharing info from older network setups | Recreated if needed |
.DS_Store | Finder view settings: icon positions, sort order, window size | Folders open with default view settings |
The table is the honest version of "rebuilt automatically". Index, change log and view settings come back. The Trash and the version history don't, because they hold your data rather than metadata about it.
Why people remove them
These files rarely take much space; the exception is .Spotlight-V100 on a large drive with many files, and .Trashes if you deleted big files from the drive without emptying the Trash. Most people clear them because:
- the drive is shared with Windows, Linux, a TV, a car stereo or a camera, which show the files as clutter;
- the drive will be handed to someone else and shouldn't carry an index of its contents;
- the Spotlight index on the drive is corrupt and search returns nothing.
Do not clean these drives
- Time Machine backup disks. The backup format relies on its own metadata. Leave the whole volume to Time Machine.
- Drives in active use by a running backup or sync app, which may rely on
.fseventsd. - Drives where you might still need something in the Trash or an older document version.
See what's on the drive
ls -la /Volumes/<drive> # shows the hidden items
du -sh /Volumes/<drive>/.Spotlight-V100 /Volumes/<drive>/.Trashes 2>/dev/null
mdutil -s /Volumes/<drive> # is Spotlight indexing this drive?
Some of these folders are protected and need sudo to read their size.
Clear them the macOS way
Use the system's own controls where they exist:
- Trash: connect the drive and empty the Trash in Finder. That clears the drive's
.Trashescontents. Check its contents first. - Spotlight index: to stop indexing a drive, add it to System Settings → Spotlight → Search Privacy (labelled Privacy in older versions).
sudo mdutil -E /Volumes/<drive>erases the index and rebuilds it, which is the standard fix for a broken one. Apple's Spotlight help covers the privacy list. - Everything else: with the drive connected and no app using it, delete the items you don't need, then eject the drive properly in Finder before unplugging.
The facts box above lists exactly which of these items Freshist looks at, and the safety page covers what it never touches.
When to leave them
If the drive only ever connects to your Mac, there's little reason to remove anything: Spotlight search and Finder views on that drive depend on these files and work better with them. For indexing problems on your main disk, see Spotlight indexing high CPU. Backups that eat local space are covered in Time Machine local snapshots.
Sources
Frequently asked questions
Why do these files show up on my TV, camera or Windows PC?
Those devices don't hide dot-files the way Finder does, so .DS_Store, .Trashes and similar items appear as clutter. Removing them before you eject the drive tidies the view on the other device; the Mac recreates them next time.
What about files starting with ._ on the drive?
Those are AppleDouble files that store Mac-only metadata on drives formatted as FAT or exFAT. macOS includes dot_clean, which merges them back into their main files; run man dot_clean in Terminal for the options.
Can I stop macOS from creating .DS_Store files?
On network shares, yes: Apple documents a defaults setting, DSDontWriteNetworkStores, that stops macOS from reading and writing .DS_Store on SMB shares. For local and USB drives there's no setting in System Settings.