Cleaning Cache, Prefs and Mail

[nüb]

I've got an SSD that I'm using for my main drive. I recently received a warning that my drive was almost full (1.2GB free). I did some standard cleaning, but then found that I had 60GB of space getting chewed up in my caches, 30GB in prefs and 17GB in my Mail folder. I'd like to "flush" a lot of that stuff, if possible. I've optimized everything else that I needed to space-wise. Does anyone have any recommendations for some software to do that? Or can I just dump a lot of that manually?

Cheers.

 

[Twimfy]

I've got an SSD that I'm using for my main drive. I recently received a warning that my drive was almost full (1.2GB free). I did some standard cleaning, but then found that I had 60GB of space getting chewed up in my caches, 30GB in prefs and 17GB in my Mail folder. I'd like to "flush" a lot of that stuff, if possible. I've optimized everything else that I needed to space-wise. Does anyone have any recommendations for some software to do that? Or can I just dump a lot of that manually?

Cheers.

CleanMyMac2 is pretty good at it but it's paid for. Onyx is the best free OS X system utility but I can't remember if it offers cache cleaning.

You could just flush it manually, but I'd personally put my trust in an app to do it for me.

 

[old-wiz]

CleanMyMac2 is pretty good at it but it's paid for. Onyx is the best free OS X system utility but I can't remember if it offers cache cleaning.

You could just flush it manually, but I'd personally put my trust in an app to do it for me.

CleanMyMac is known for deleting OS stuff and resulting in an unbootable system, requiring a complete reinstall of osx. There are threads about problems with CleanMyMac (or, as I prefer, WreckMyMac)

 

[m4v3r1ck]

Big fan of OnyX! Don't bother CleanMyMac unless you want to destroy your system.....

Use it before/after an OS update most of the time.

Downloads for OS X 10.x.x versions

Yes it cleans cache!

GL & Cheers

 

[guitarman777]

I've been using Disk Diag from the Mac App store. It's not as deep & thorough as Onyx, but I've gotten good results from it. I would like to dig a bit deeper with it as there are some cached/logged settings I wish it wouldn't remove, i.e. every time I run it my audio production software needs to re-connect with my entire plugin library. Annoying.

 

[bobr1952]

Recommend Onyx--can't recall any posts about this great little free program causing problems.

 

[techfreak103]

Best way to clean up space on the HDD:
Remove caches in the Macintosh HD/Library/Caches folder, to get here click on Finder and click on Go in the Menu Bar and then click Computer
After moving caches to Trash, DO NOT DELETE THEM!

Next:
Go to Finder, click on Go in the Menubar and this time hold down the Option key and click on Library
You will see caches, double-click to open the folder, drag all the contents to Trash
Restart your computer
THEN, empty trash

If you have a iPhone you probably are backing up to your computer through iTunes. So...
Open iTunes, go to Preferences that is located in iTunes in the Menu bar at the top of the screen, click on the Devices Tab
You will see all the backups of your phone to iTunes. Remove all except the most recent one.

Now you will need to re-index your Mac.
Here is a link to help with that: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2409
Follow this exactly, and it will show what you actually have on your Mac

 

[nbnbxdnb]

I just have a quick question there... Is OSX supposed to clean cache and other temporary files automatically?