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Delete Thumbs.db files with Spotlight

April 9th, 2007 - How to, Mac OS X, Tips & Tricks

Any Mac user that has shared files from a Windows PC has surely found the always annoying and completely useless Thumbs.db files scattered around their directories. We’ve been asked about deleting Thumbs.db files a few times before, and typically we run a simple script from the command line, but there’s another even easier way. Using only Spotlight, LifeHacker shows us how to delete all Thumbs.db files from your Mac in one fell swoop.

Delete Thumbs.db files from Mac OS X

  1. Launch Spotlight (command-spacebar)
  2. Type “Thumbs.db”, when a list is gathered hit the return key
  3. Click the ‘more’ button to show all search results
  4. Now simply drag and drop all of the Thumbs.db files into the trash, and empty the trash
  5. Done! Your Mac will now be rid of all Thumbs.db files


As you can see, this tip is very simple and for many it is easier than launching the Terminal and doing it through the command line. If you’re wondering what Thumbs.db files are, they are simply a small cache file that holds thumbnail preview data for folders in Windows, it is not a crucial system file, so do not worry about deleting them from your Mac (where they serve no purpose anyway).

Source: LifeHacker: Delete Windows system files from my Mac

Posted by: Editor

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Comments:

Comments: 11

Comment from regis
Time: April 10, 2007, 8:25 am

wow, another usefull feature of spotlight….

Comment from Munin
Time: April 10, 2007, 8:44 am

Hi there, OS X Daily! I just wanted to say that I stumbled upon this website earlier this morning and I’ve read all the articles.

As a soon-to-be “Switcher”, this is a wonderful website that I’ll keep tabs on. Even though I don’t have a Mac yet, I think it’s EXTREMELY useful to watch over.

Thank you for making my life easier as a “Mac noob”.

Comment from The BaldGuy
Time: May 18, 2007, 4:55 am

Nice tip, but I figured there had to be a way to automate this. So, I did. The result is here

Pingback from Stop DS_Store file creation on network connections – OS X Daily
Time: May 29, 2007, 8:10 am

[...] Mac OS X isn’t the only operating system to create annoying system files though. If you ever access your Mac from a Windows PC, you’ll likely find a few Thumbs.db files laying around in your Mac’s folders. Thumbs.db serves much the same purpose in Windows as the DS_Store file does for Mac OS X, making it useless for a Mac user. If you want to get rid of the equally annoying and useless Thumbs.db , read the easy how-to article to remove Thumbs.db files quickly with Spotlight. [...]

Comment from juna
Time: October 21, 2008, 6:28 pm

that is the best tip ever. i love you. thank you so so so so much.

Comment from Training for a Mini Triathlon
Time: June 20, 2009, 3:47 pm

You know, I absolutely hate those files… Thanks for the guide.

Comment from Sir Tux
Time: August 20, 2009, 8:02 am

I hate those _MACOSX folders in windows. Worst part is they’re usually read-only.
Good thing Linux and Vista don’t do stupid metadata in extra files anymore. They take the centralised approach. Which may use anual cleaning up, but doen’t clutter other folders, or other OS’s.

Comment from Nathan
Time: September 10, 2009, 2:57 pm

Cool beans I was wondering what the heck those were for and how the heck to get rid of them..:)

Comment from S.Koibito
Time: December 7, 2009, 1:08 pm

This doesn’t work very well for us. Spotlight has so many bugs that I can actually do this procedure three times in a row, and actually still have files to delete on the third run.
We (work colleagues and I) do not know why this happens, but on most of our Macs, running 10.4 to 10.6, this is pretty much standard.
It comes down to either corrupt spotlight DBs (and we have given up deleting and re-creating them) slow building of the DBs, or the massive bug in spotlight, where it ignores the Privacy selection on drives. Which is a big no-no, because for some reason it insists on building DBs on our windows drives. We have to repetitively turn privacy on, only to find a half-dozen drives including the windows ones, being scanned by spotlight, all over again.
On top of that, it considers all sorts of areas on the boot drive as inaccessible, even though that’s an area we need to get to. And “Size” isn’t included in the table list?!?

Comment from S.Koibito
Time: December 7, 2009, 1:10 pm

Oops, forgot the final bit. We found a more reliable method using this procedure, but we do it through FileBuddy. Takes a little bit longer, but gets every single one of the files, no matter where they are, and you can easily exclude the windows drives that are currently attached.

Pingback from How to prevent .DS_Store file creation – OS X Daily
Time: February 3, 2010, 6:09 am

[...] a largely Windows network, you’ll probably be running into these all the time. You can easily delete Thumbs.db files in Mac OS X by using [...]

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April 9th, 2007