Known as a Desktop Services Store, these are both created and used by the Apple OS X operating system to store custom folder display preferences, such as folder background images and file view settings.

Files that are recognized by an operating system are generally hidden by default, so these files will be hidden to OS X users. However, if an OS X user accesses a remote server's folder (E.g on a networked Windows server), a .DS_Store file will be created and will be visible to Windows users.