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I have a local directory that Google Drive is syncing to the cloud, and "Icon?" files keep appearing in directories. I can delete them with:

find . -name $'Icon\r' -delete

but they keep re-appearing! I work in the terminal a lot and it drives me nuts to see these appear. I guess I'm a little OCD when it comes to file management.

What's especially confusing is that these folders do not have custom icons. They're just the regular folder icon. Unless the Google Drive sync program is creating them.

What is creating those? Is it Finder? If so maybe someone can recommend a Finder alternative? Or is it Google Drive sync? Or something else? I figure if I can find out what is creating them that's a first step to preventing them in the first place.

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So far my answer is to change "ls" to hide those files, so at least I don't have to see them. OSX's 'ls' tool doesn't have an option to ignore files, but GNU's 'ls' tool does.

  1. Install GNU core utilities:

    brew install coreutils

  2. Change what 'ls' does:

    alias ls="gls --ignore $'Icon\r' --quoting-style=literal"

  3. If you like that change, make it permanent by adding that to ~/.bash_profile

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    That does not stop them appearing in the cloud - they will still be visible in web views and other apps
    – mmmmmm
    Commented Apr 25 at 16:26
  • You are correct. Do you have a better idea though? If you do, it would be very helpful.
    – Ian Charnas
    Commented Apr 28 at 16:02

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