Good evening. It is for me too, now that I’ve solved a particularly tricky little problem. I have been in the following applications trying to solve the appearance of hidden files (.fseventsd, .Trashes, .Spotlight-V100, etc.) on a USB stick drive:
Disk Utility
Cocktail
TinkerTool
Graphic Converter
Aperture
Terminal
iPhoto
ImageOptim
Eject for Windows
(Didn’t need most of this stuff in the end, and most of it I hadn’t used in years.)
Let me explain what’s happening: A Mac creates a few hidden files on USB sticks because when the files are accessed by a Mac, it needs these other bits of information. I wrongly assumed the days of that kind of thing were in the past since OSX happened. Nope. (I haven’t done tech work for years, so I don’t keep up on stuff anymore anyway.)
These invisible/hidden files are completely harmless in most situations no matter what operating system that USB stick gets stuck into. However, enter my issue: I need to play a folder of jpegs on a television.
Sounds easy enough, I know, so I spent all day assembling a collection of 54 images I want to display as a slideshow in a café to accompany an art exhibition for the next two months. Sadly, the extra files kept showing up, and not only that, but they also doubled how many image files the Sony TV thought were on the stick because the Mac had written a ._(filename).jpg for every one of the genuine images. (The dot indicates it’s a hidden file.)
I ran the images through ImageOptim thinking I could strip out extraneous information. It certainly did strip it down… to the point the TV couldn’t render the images correctly because ImageOptim removed the colour profile data. Oops.
To make a long story short, here’s what worked for me:
1.) Batch export the images from Aperture (or other photo library app) to be the same colour profile. (In my case, sRGB IEC61966-2.1 – Sony TV likes that one.)
2.) Stick them all in a folder that contains no spaces in its name, or uses an underscore if needed.
3.) Copy this folder to a USB stick you have just freshly erased to become a FAT32 file system in Disk Utility.
4.) Drop the USB stick icon/filename onto a utility app icon called Eject for Windows. –> You can download it here* <–
That’s it. Eject for Windows is the miracle needed to delete those hidden files before ejecting the stick. No more garbage showing up on the TV browser. No more hidden files looking like broken images. Easy, finally, and it only took me hours to figure this all out.
Hope it helps someone else out there.
* Download and do this stuff at your own risk. Thanks. 🙂