Support Start > Mac OS "Icon" Files

If you publish a folder from a Mac OS computer, and that folder has a "custom icon" on your Mac, you may find that the directory on our server contains an extra empty file named "Icon". These files are copies of the invisible icon files on your Mac that you can't usually see.

These files are harmless, but they have a quirk: they may be difficult to delete from the server.

The problem happens because they files are really named "Icon" with an invisible carriage return at the end of the name. The Mac OS gives them that unusual name to make sure you can't accidentally delete them, but that makes them difficult to delete with an FTP program, too.

Advanced users can delete these files by making a shell connection, changing to the Web directory, and running the following command:

find -name 'Icon?' -size 0 -exec rm '{}' \;

This will find the files and delete them.

If you're not comfortable using the shell, contact us and we can run this command for you.