Yes, that configuration still works [1].

DeathToDSStore [2] works as well, but like Asepsis it requires you to disable SIP, and that's very much not recommended!

I wonder if its possible to hook into Spotlight real-time (with mdfind?) and just delete them right after its created. Together with disabling it on networks that should be "good enough" to not see them. Might be problematic with removeable media such as USB sticks though. If you're sync/unmounting those via command line, consider a find with xargs [3] on that media before unmounting.

I haven't looked at Blue Harvest as already suggested. If that still works (without disabling SIP) I'm curious how they do that.

[1] defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true

[2] https://github.com/snielsen/DeathToDSStore

[3] find /path_to_USB_media -name .DS_Store -print0 | xargs -0 rm

> I wonder if its possible to hook into Spotlight real-time (with mdfind?) and just delete them right after its created.

Not Spotlight but the File System Events API, which was designed for precisely this kind of thing.

Please note, DSDontWriteNetworkStores only prevents finder from writing metadata files to network filesystems, as the configuration key name suggests. It does not prevent it from writing metadata on your local filesystems, you will either need to use something like DeathToDSStore (requires disabling SIP), or remove them regularly post-creation.

Blue Harvest doesn’t stop the files from being created but it deletes them when it sees them automatically. Haven’t used it in years but the release notes mention APFS as supported. http://zeroonetwenty.com/blueharvest/