Apps folder: View settings are always being reset I have a small problem with my apps folder (/Applications/).

Whenever I change the view settings, for example, the size of the text, and click "Use as standard", it works fine.

But after some time, definitely after reboot or logout, those settings are not applied anymore and the old, ugly style is being used.

I heard that the file .DS_Store contains these settings. There is none in my apps folder, so I created one, but it didn't even save, no warning or error was given.

In all other folders, this works fine.

Does anybody have an idea to make my apps folder to stick to the chosen view settings permanently?
Finder view settings are stored in invisble .DS_Store files, in the parent of the folder being set. So the settings for /Applications are stored in /.DS_Store, and /Applications/.DS_Store holds the settings for subfolders of /Applications, such as /Applications/Utilities.

Normally you have write permission to these files in one of two ways:


For system folders such as /Applications, the .DS_Store files have
write access for members of the admin group, i.e. administrators.
For folders that you create, you are the owner of the .DS_Store file.


The problem is that the permissions can get screwed up. One way is via the macOS Migration Assistant: the migration changes the permissions on some .DS_Store files to be owned by root, but with no write access granted to the admin group.  This results in the symptoms you describe.

A fix is to first run this command:

 sudo find -x / -name .DS_Store -user root -exec chmod -v g+w {} \;


which will give the group write access to any .DS_Store files owned by root.

That still won't fix all of the files; there may be a few stragglers (such as, /.DS_Store) where the migration has changed the file to the wrong group, such as wheel instead of admin. You can fix that with the chgrp command, e.g.:

 sudo chgrp admin /.DS_Store