A major space saving tip for Safari users

[arnamak]

Hey there everybody, I've been going through and really trying to rid my new MBA of all useless bloat that I don't need, with a 128GB SSD I really want to try to keep everything as minimalist as possible.
So, poking my nose into the depths of Finder, probably into some areas I shouldn't have (there's always reformat, right?), I did indeed come across something I thought I should let you guys in on.

Buried within ~/Library/Caches you'll find the folder "com.apple.Safari", in that folder, you'll see another titled "Webpage Previews". I've had my MBA for less than a week, and this folder was at ~500MB . This folder is for apps such as Top Sites, or for your history so you can preview before opening with high res screenshots (of pretty much everything you've done with Safari)..I use neither of those features so this is pretty much just a gigantic waste of space.

I just deleted all of those images, went back to the com.apple.Safari folder, highlighted the "Webpage Previews" folder, hit cmd + I (or right click and hit "Get Info") and then checked the little box that says "Lock". This will prevent Safari from filling this folder with things you will more than likely never need.

Anywho, after all my efforts, I have all my music (thanks to icloud, no space required) and essentials for my computer and I'm sitting on 104GB free space .

 

[GGJstudios]

Or you can simply set Web thumbnail previews to Disabled in the Secrets preference pane.

Freeing up drive space in Mac OS X

 

[arnamak]

Or you can simply set Web thumbnail previews to Disabled in the Secrets preference pane.

Freeing up drive space in Mac OS X

I haven't used Secrets since about a year ago, it did not bode well with my previous machine. Is it stable/useable now? Perhaps it was just my old computer, I'll give it a shot. Thanks for the tip.

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Freeing up drive space in Mac OS X

This was great, Monolingual and deleting Alex were super beneficial. Thanks.

 

[Amad3U5]

It is a good idea if you're really short on storage room, but that cache makes your most visited pages load a lot quicker (instead of having to download the data, Safari just loads it from the SSD), which is very pleasant. This technique could be good if you have exceedingly fast Internet speed, therefore do not benefit from this cache, but as someone who has a mediocre 3.5 Mb/s download speed, I really like having my favourite websites load in a flash.

However, If you really want to save SSD space, I would recommend that you download Monolingual to delete all unused languages from of your programs and the system itself. I saved ~1.1 GB by deleting all but 4 languages. Very useful!

 

[arnamak]

It is a good idea if you're really short on storage room, but that cache makes your most visited pages load a lot quicker (instead of having to download the data, Safari just loads it from the SSD), which is very pleasant. This technique could be good if you have exceedingly fast Internet speed, therefore do not benefit from this cache, but as someone who has a mediocre 3.5 Mb/s download speed, I really like having my favourite websites load in a flash.

However, If you really want to save SSD space, I would recommend that you download Monolingual to delete all unused languages from of your programs and the system itself. I saved ~1.1 GB by deleting all but 4 languages. Very useful!

I believe you're mistaking the "Web Page Preview" folder for the file Cache.db. The cache file is where all of the data is stored, the folder I'm referring to is only used for things like Top Sites and History. Web Page Preview stores a screenshot of all of your visited sites, which would have no benefit in opening pages quicker.
However, Cache.db can also take up a lot of room. So for those with fast connections, there's always the option to delete that in a pinch, though it is not recommended.