At this point, becoming suspicious that Apple intentionally puts things into macOS to fill up your disk over time and make you want to upgrade.
This machine lost 800mb over the last two days, even though I didn't create anything or update any software.
I went looking for stuff that might have been generated. Here's one. A directory of…copies of the desktop background images (which already ship with the OS in another directory.)
macOS creates new copies at random times. Forever. What.
@cancel Yeah it is a bit silly, it was the only other thing I could think of. The files are taking up roughly the room you’d expect for the listed resolution in the file name.
Sidebar: I disabled the live wallpapers on my Mac after realising that it was keeping the entire video loaded in RAM at all times *just in case* I stepped away and it went into screensaver mode.
@cancel @miki For me, the parent path corresponds to this:
getconf DARWIN_USER_TEMP_DIR
=> /var/folders/hc/w17tmcyn47j16fs8h4rb3_6w0000gn/T/
(see "man confstr", also "getconf DARWIN_USER_CACHE_DIR")
So it's a system-level cache dir that persists indefinitely, but I believe can be removed when safe-booted. What you're seeing looks like careless use of that dir by Apple devs, but I'd apply Hanlon's razor in this case.
@cancel They shouldn’t be duplicated, there’s just a lot of point releases. Look in ~/Library/Developer and delete the old ones.
Also check out OmniDiskSweeper for finding unusually large folders.
@cancel ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/macOS DeviceSupport/?
I don't have any iOS stuff in there so I don't know the iOS path but take a look around.
I also have a gig of near duplicate "devices" (each including the same example photo library) in ~/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Devices/*
I also just noticed that XCode 15 puts simulators in a new (unknown to me) location now. So anything in the Developer folder is probably out of date. Thankfully you can now delete simulators from the Xcode gui.
@msx obviously just get a mac so you can airdrop the files to yourself and deal with HEIC natively
at least iphones will go more than 26 months before security updates stop and your phone becomes a liability
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@cancel so on top of having intemtionally unupgradeable hardware and unrepairable flash by virtue of soldering down the SSD as a part that'll inevitably wear over use they literally commit themselves to accelerate the #ReducedLifecycle by virtue of introducing added wear & tear...
Someone should tell #LouisRossman about it...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qbrLiGY4Cg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYG4VMqatEY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MANlo9fV9yI
@standev still, your hardware would likely last even longer if RAM & SSD weren't soldered on, CPUs were socketed and batteries weren't glued-in...
Granted, noone uses #Apple hardware because they like it [except @fuchsiii because she's in love with her #fanless #MacBookAir] but most people want #macOS and it's #exclusives!
@kkarhan @fuchsiii I gave up on my 2012 MacBook Air in 2020 due to a confluence of factors (SSD was too small, not enough RAM, 32-bit hardware in an increasingly 64-bit software world) but battery swelling was the reason I had to recycle it.
It outlasted two PC laptops during the time I had it, but I think it would have been more expensive to upgrade SSD+RAM+replace battery than it was to buy a used 2017-era MBP.
@kkarhan @fuchsiii I do wish it were more plausible to upgrade RAM/SSD to allow for mid-cycle upgrades, but my use case for Mac laptops (lightweight, durable platform for word processing/spreadsheets, internet browsing, and media consumption along with the odd game or lightweight VM host) is very forgiving.
I’ve settled on buying a used Mac laptop of some stripe every few years rather than buying new and either reselling or running them into the ground like I did with my 2006 and 2012 Macs.
@standev I think that's the most rational choice:
Getting equipment as a tool aka. a means to access or create content and work as well as play with.
After all, #HardwarePorn is all nice and cool but maxing out everything doesn't necessitate in a good price/performance ratio - espechally with light productivity where the ability of the user is way more limiting than the hardware...
Yeah and it almost lasted double the expected lifecycle maximum [5 years]...
But aside from being 32bit-only, it's battery ecoming a #DangerPillow and the limitations based off the CPU [i.e. RAM and SSD upgrades were limited and/or not cost-effective] it was likely still a good machine and removing the battery likely made it still a useable linux machine to browse the web with...
Personally I just want to advocate for #repairable and #ugradeable laptops because that is possible!
@standev TBH, @frameworkcomputer do a pretty decent job considering the compareatively low funding and good price for their hardware.
I wish I had the €€€€€ to get the #NUCbook off the ground even if that'll be a very CHONKY BOI but even if we assume we only want #Apple-esque #SoC's even that could've been designed upgradeable like the @Raspberry_Pi #CM3+ & #CM4 have shown...
@cancel is this cache by any chance
/var/folders/…/C/ makes me think it is
@cancel oh yeah that’s weird, maybe the automated cache cleaner broke?
only other thing i could think of is you have some process that’s reading all these files and preventing the automated cleaner from thinking they’re unused
@cancel it's about 300 megs in a cache folder- you *can* just delete everything here will no ill effects, the system will just recreate them
i'm more interested to know why yours isn't cleaning up after itself
@cancel every single program keeps caches, they are files that are generated to make subsequent use of that program faster
in this case, to make loading of your desktop wallpaper faster so it doesn't have to resize it to your monitor every time
Apple doesn't teach people how to clean it up because it sits in the background and manages itself (or at least, it's supposed to)
if you really want to step into that process and do it yourself, I recommend CleanMyMac X
@traumaphoenix Thank you for telling me what caches are. Most of these file duplicates aren’t the size of my display. Even if they were, there don’t need to be repeated copies of the same files. You say “if you really want to step into this” like it’s not really a problem and I shouldn’t care about 1.5gb of wasted space for no reason. You were saying Apple takes care of this but are now recommending third party software.
https://kolektiva.social/@mixael/111478509505382170 here’s a fifth one now
@[email protected] Just had this exact same experience.
@cancel honestly, <5 GB, IMO, is not worth losing sleep over
I'm only giving you the option for if you do. but if you use it to delete your caches, you'll notice half of them are back within 24 hours.
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