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I just noticed that the following directory is taking up 701.7 MB on my hard drive.

~/Library/Caches/Firefox/Profiles/<my hash>.default/Google Gears for Firefox

This has the following subdirectories and files.

  • docs.google.com (49.2 KB)
  • gmail.com (0 KB)
  • localserver.db (7.5 MB)
  • mail.google.com (690.3 MB)
  • permissions.db (24.6 KB)
  • spreadsheets.google.com (4 KB)
  • wave.google.com (8.1 KB)
  • www.gmail.com (0 KB)
  • www.google.com (3.6 MB)

By far the largest subdirectory is mail.google.com, which itself mainly contains the GoogleMail_managed[1]#localserver (374.1 MB) and GoogleMail[9]#localserver (236.6 MB) subdirectories.

How can I clear this from my Firefox cache? Is it safe to simply delete it?

I'm using Firefox 10.0 on Mac OS X 10.6.8. It doesn't look like the Google Gears add-on is installed anymore.

2 Answers 2

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Is it safe to simply delete it?

The easiest way to discover that is to just back-up your profile folder and try.

The contenst of the Google Gears for Firefox folder could tell more about what it contains; if it looks like named files it is more likely to be configuration, if it looks like hashes then it is more likely to be cache. But well, as I can't see the contents I can't tell you for sure.

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  • Okay, I deleted the directory and have not noticed any ill effects so far. Thanks! Mar 1, 2012 at 8:34
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Google has discontinued Gears and is no longer using it in Gmail or Google Docs according to this post on the official Google blog. There's more technical information here. Google Wave is also discontinued.

That pretty much covers all the information saved in your Gears folder. I'd say it's safe to delete the folder (but I'm not you). If you are unsure, do as Tom Wijsman suggests and back up the folder first.

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