Consequences of deleting .DS_Store

If I manually delete a .DS_Store file from a directory, what's the worst that can happen? What important information might I lose?

Solution 1:

.DS_Store files are only used by the Finder to hold custom view settings for that particular folder. In most cases nothing will happen if you delete them, or at worst custom Finder view settings (icon size, position, background color, etc) will be lost.

If you are trying to maintain a 'spatial Finder' experience in OS X, you might care more, but for most users no change will be noticed.

Solution 2:

The worst that will happen is that folder display attributes (icon positions and view settings) will go away. If you don't consider icon positions and view settings important, there is no important information stored in these files, so it is safe to delete them.