Why are embroidery files from my Mac empty when I open them on my embroidery machine?

This happens with BERNINA and Husquvarna machines. We are contacting BERNINA about this. I suggest that you contact your local dealer to see if we can encourage BERNINA and Husquvarna to make their machines work more like other devices

Workaround (how to choose the right file) — When you copy embroidery files from an Apple computer to a USB stick, you must look carefully at the files when you load them on your embroidery machine. For each design you copied to your USB stick, your machine will display 2 files. One will have a normal design “preview” and a normal name. The other files are MacOS properties files. They have a squiggly diagonal line as the preview, and the name is almost normal, except that it has “._” at the beginning of the file name.

Here is an example:

The last 2 files look like normal, and they have normal file names. If you open them, they will look and stitch like a normal embroidery files. The first two files (after the folder) are MacOS properties files — they have the squiggly line preview, and they have “._” at the beginning of the file name. They will be empty if you open them.

So, until BERNINA and Husquvarna update their software, avoid the files that don’t look normal, and open the files that DO look normal. If you want to delete the MacOS properties files from your USB stick, that’s a good idea. You can delete the properties files on your embroidery machine, but, you won’t see them on your Mac (I’ll explain why in a moment).

One note: if you have loaded a lot of files on your USB stick, you will see a lot of properties files when you insert the USB stick in your embroidery machine. This is one good reason to load just the designs you want to stitch at any given time.

So, what is happening here? — Whenever you save a file under MacOS, the computer actually saves two files: the file you want, and a Properties File that saves information that MacOS needs. That happens when you save a file to your computer’s hard drive, and when you save files to a USB stick (since it’s essentially a small hard drive). On your Mac, the Properties Files are invisible — since you don’t need to use them, the Mac doesn’t show them to you. And, to the best of my knowledge, there’s no way to make them visible.

Windows computers and many other devices that can accept a USB stick have been programmed to ignore (and not display) properties files. However, other devices — like BERNINA and Husquvarna machines, and some Smart TVs — haven’t been programmed to ignore the properties files, so they display them… and cause confusion.

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