[HN Gopher] macOS Keeps a Huge Wallpapers Cache ___________________________________________________________________ macOS Keeps a Huge Wallpapers Cache Author : giuliomagnifico Score : 62 points Date : 2022-09-26 08:29 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (giuliomagnifico.blog) (TXT) w3m dump (giuliomagnifico.blog) | dimitar wrote: | I got a MacBook Air 2020 with 128GB storage to use mostly for | browsing and light dev and that quickly filled up. It's like the | OS tries to obsolete the machine as quickly as possible. The | biggest annoyance is Finder telling me most of the storage is | used by "Other". | keyle wrote: | Try something like disk inventory X. It's a life saver. | tehwebguy wrote: | Put my vote in for `ncdu` (just skip your iCloud folders) | kitsunesoba wrote: | My longstanding favorite for this has been | OmniDiskSweeper[0]. It's dead simple and I've been using it | for just about the entirety of OS X's existence. | | [0]: https://www.omnigroup.com/more/ | moralestapia wrote: | Disk Inventory X is great and that's how I found out the | speech folder on my OS X was taking like 12GB. | gtm1260 wrote: | Gotta put a word in for daisy disk! Maybe you're paying for | some fancy animations, but by golly are they nice LOL. | arthurcolle wrote: | DaisyDisk is great. Best $10 on an app I've ever spent | (circa 2015) | erwinh wrote: | Some of the best functional data vis out there. For those | wondering the chart type used by daisy disk is called a | zoomable sunburst. | boopmaster wrote: | I second Daisy Disk. When I made the leap from Windows to | mac in the early 00s I wanted something to replace the | freeware "scanner" I had found so entirely useful. | | http://www.steffengerlach.de/freeware/ | wzyoi wrote: | The iPhone is doing the same. The unremovable caches will kill | your space with time. | | I remember the Apple Music app caching and never removing any | songs you've listened to and not showing any space it uses in | settings. | | But this behavior is not specific to the Apple Music app - any | other can do it too. Any caches from social apps you use have a | high chance of being untraceable - it all goes into "Other". | | Why? Try buying a model with a higher capacity to get an | answer. | | I also saw this behavior with an Android device - where | removing a messenger on my grandfather's phone freed up 20+ GB | of space. | jimvdv wrote: | I once found 15gb+ of Spotify cache from my 256gb MacBook. | Deleted the app and use the web player now. | ReactiveJelly wrote: | People ask why everything is web apps and there's the | answer - It's a layer of sandboxing that users have _at | least some_ control over. | Wowfunhappy wrote: | > I remember the Apple Music app caching and never removing | any songs you've listened to and not showing any space it | uses in settings. | | Wait--really? I don't use Apple Music, but surely with heavy | use, you could easily end up with a cache that's hundreds and | hundreds of gigabytes large... | justinator wrote: | > The folder path is: Macintosh SSD/Users/[yourHome]/Library/Cont | ainers/Photos/Data/Library/Application Support/Photos Desktop | | Certainly isn't a | ~/Library/Containers/Photos/Data/Library/Application | Support/Photos Desktop in my home. | pulvinar wrote: | The actual folder is "/System/Library/Desktop\ Pictures", but | it's protected on newer systems. It consumes 414MB on my | machine, which is 0.3% of a 128GB drive. Doesn't seem worth the | trouble to me. | | BTW, I found the path by double-clicking the folder as seen in | Desktop & Screen Saver, then dragged that selected Finder | folder to a terminal window. | giuliomagnifico wrote: | > "/System/Library/Desktop\ Pictures" | | No, this is the wallpapers folder used to store all the | default macOS wallpapers, not a cache folder, don't delete it | (if you don't want to delete all the macOS stock wallpapers). | saagarjha wrote: | That's the desktop pictures folder. This is talking about | some sort of cache for photos you use as your wallpaper. | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | I don't have one, either. | | I suspect it gets formed, when we use the Photos App to set the | desktop. | | I have always used the PrefPane. | giuliomagnifico wrote: | Yes if you don't use Photos to set the wallpapers, then you | don't have it. | ryandrake wrote: | I really wish OSes would stop using my filesystem as a dumping | ground for rando metadata their developers keep generating and | finding no other place for. Between .DS_Store, .Trash, | desktop.ini (on Windows), and all these various "caches" garbage | heaps they randomly dump into my directories, I feel I have less | and less control over what I'm keeping on my own hard drive by | default. A hard drive that _I_ purchased, not some developer in | Cupertino. | | Yes, I know some of these can be turned off if you dig deep | enough in settings, but the behavior should not be on by default. | [deleted] | hcarvalhoalves wrote: | To disable .DS_Store files: defaults write | com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true | saagarjha wrote: | ...of course, only on external disks. | yjftsjthsd-h wrote: | Are internal disks likely to use a non-mac-native | filesystem? | unethical_ban wrote: | "Delete cached wallpapers" should be art of a disk cleanup | wizard, but I understand why they do it. | Legion wrote: | In one of those random coincidences, I recognize OP's username | because just last night I was reading their forum comments on the | OpenWRT forum about the Netgear WAX202. Was trying to decide if | picking one up at a $30 sale price would make sense as a | replacement for an older device, the R7800. | | OP did not find it to be so after their testing, and as such, my | $30 remained in my pocket. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-09-27 23:00 UTC)