[HN Gopher] macOS Keeps a Huge Wallpapers Cache
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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.
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