A quick tip on how to hide all the numerous .asd files

[Fanu]

Are all the .asd files created by Ableton Live cluttering up your sample folder view, too? Yeah, I know – it is annoying. We need them but we don't have to see them.
An easy tip on how to hide them on a Mac:
• do a search for .asd on the root of your HD to find them anywhere
• open Terminal and type "chflags hidden" (without quotes)
• drag and drop all the .asd files that Finder found onto Terminal window
• hit Enter

Boom. Now they're hidden.

I post about other music production related stuff on my FB page – peep if ya dig!
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[Tarekith]

Great tip!

[[jur]]

Nice, thanks!

[chapelier fou]

Sounds great.
But to be sure of what i'm doing, can you explain what "chflag hidden" does ?

[chapelier fou]

ok i got it. The drag & drop on terminal window hides the dropped files.

[CREMDELAKRUG]

You can also set an Automator script to run that searches for .asd the hides all the selected files.

FInd Finder Items
any content with .asd

the Run Shell Script

while read f ; do
chflags hidden "$f"
done

[sqyttles]

I've used this one-liner on my Mac using with Bash 5 and iTerm:

sudo find /path/to/samples/ -name "*.asd" -exec chflags hidden {} \;

Replace "/path/to/samples/" with the path to your sample folder, of course.

[dedmunds]

doest this trick work for all newly created asd files or just the ones already on your computer?

[baseinstinct]

Anyone know how to do that on windows?

[tomasmark79]

Windows 10

win+r - enter cmd enter

Then in Windows Console ...

Code: Select all

C:\Users\tomas>cd ..

C:\Users>cd ..

C:\>attrib.exe +h /s *.asd

F:\

F:\>attrib.exe +h /s *.asd

And so on ...

[baseinstinct]

really cool, thx

[holygroove!]

can anyone advise how to undo this process? just incase something gets broken and you need to unhide everything again

edit: ok figured it out so here's a few points for guidance

-don't press enter after typing "chflags hidden". drag & drop files, then press enter.

-this won't hide files if you search for them, so searching ".asd" will always show the files, even though they are hidden in folders

-so to make them visible again, type "chflags nohidden", search ".asd", drag & drop the files you want visible and press enter

[donito]

This is still the best way to hide them ? I think the option to automatically hide them should be a feature request if it ain't already. I'll just disable their creation until then. I think a M1 mac studio could survive without it, let's see.

[brianwdowling]

I disabled the creation quite a while ago and haven't had any issues. Using both M1 Mac and an older 2019 Intel Mac.

Brian