Cleaning up temp files in Mac OS X

Question

My 4 months old Mac partition volume is losing space slowly and gradually. I am pretty sure there are a lot of orphaned temporary files laying around in the volume.

I know where to find the obsoleted temp files in my Windows partition, how about in Mac OS X?

Answer 1

Not sure if this helps but i would try Onyx and Appdelete to get rid of applications, seems to do a decent job of getting rid of extra system files, etc.

Answer 2

Another couple of possible set of options for checking what is occupying disk space:

Baseline -- unique among disk scanners in that it has a brilliant snapshot function. So it scans your disk and shows you what is occupying space, but it will save this snapshot. A couple of weeks later, run it again and compare to your last snapshot - it will tell you every file that has changed. This is unique and very very useful, especially before/after installing large software suites.

Daisy Disk -- This is visually the most beautiful of the OS X disk scanners, I always prefer the pie maps visualisation...

Answer 3

Mac OS X temporary files are stored in /tmp and /private/var/folders. Your specific Cache and Temporary folders can be found by running the command echo $TMPDIR and/or usr/bin/getconf DARWIN_USER_CACHE_DIR

These locations should be automatically cleared out regularly either through the daily, weekly and monthly "cron" scripts and/or a restart so you shouldn't have to worry about it. You can use tools such as Onyx, Cocktail, Leopard Cache Cleaner, etc. to run these scripts and/or clear your caches and temp files.

The one big exception is Safari's Thumbnail cache does not delete and can be found in your DARWIN_USER_CACHE_DIR under com.apple.Safari.

To find out where most of your disk space is going (and if temporary files are even a culprit) I suggest using a program such as OmniDiskSweeper or GrandPerspective to tell you where all the large files are.

Answer 4

I got a bundled copy of AppZapper with a MacHeist - recommended.

JDiskreport - Free Java Utility will show you where all your space has gone - also recommended

Answer 5

Reboot your computer. If it suddenly has lots more free space, this is due to the ever-expanding swap files. They are reclaimed (deleted) upon reboot and will eventually get re-created as you use your Mac. This is completely normal.

There's no need for their existence to turn you into a reboot-obsessed user, however. It's a good thing when your Mac swaps unused memory out to disk.

Answer 6

Most of what I could say is covered above, with a couple exceptions that may or may not apply to your specific case:

If you use Adobe Bridge, the cache folder can get quite amazingly big. I cleaned mine out the other day and ended up removing 8gb of extra space. Also I'm using CS4, and I noticed that my CS3 cache folder was still around even though I got rid of CS3 a while ago. Another 2+ gigs there.

I also use Parallels 4 and it has a nasty tendency to use up all of the free space given enough time, but a computer reboot handles that. This could be just me though. If you do have Parallels or Fusion and have regular snapshots made, that could also be a factor.

I use Whatsize to check what's taking up space, but I got my copy before they started charging. I like it better than the other ones I've seen.