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Giving my mac a good tidy up.

Tetsy

Tetsy

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 24, 2012
82
27
Hi Guys
I am wanting to give my mac a good clean and tidy up and delete old files that i don't use or need and hope it speeds it up a little and free's more space.
I am not sure where to find cache folders and when found if they are safe to delete.
Any help will be much appreciated.
Many Thanks.
Tetsy :)
 
Tetsy said:
Hi Guys
I am wanting to give my mac a good clean and tidy up and delete old files that i don't use or need and hope it speeds it up a little and free's more space.
I am not sure where to find cache folders and when found if they are safe to delete.
Any help will be much appreciated.
Many Thanks.
Tetsy :)
Click to expand...
Try out GrandPerspective for a start.
 
Tetsy said:
Hi Guys
I am wanting to give my mac a good clean and tidy up and delete old files that i don't use or need and hope it speeds it up a little and free's more space.
I am not sure where to find cache folders and when found if they are safe to delete.
Any help will be much appreciated.
Many Thanks.
Tetsy :)
Click to expand...

They are in two places.

The first is the main Library folder below. Open Finder and hit shift-command-g then paste in the path below and enter to get to the correct folder. You can delete the entire cache folder contents.

Code: 
/Library/Caches

Then repeat the process for the user cache folder at the path below.

Code: 
~/Library/Caches

Afterward reboot the machine and all the cache files will be rebuilt as needed. Any cache folders for old apps you no longer have will of course be gone.
 
Thanks for the reply's and have done what Weaselboy said but when i open finder and under home folder i type in cache 4 folders show up dated a couple of days ago and other documents from the past,i did shut down my mac after i deleted them then turned it back on.
Have i done this wrong ? or can i just delete the 4 folders and documents also ?.
Thanks again.
Tetsy
 
Tetsy said:
Thanks for the reply's and have done what Weaselboy said but when i open finder and under home folder i type in cache 4 folders show up dated a couple of days ago and other documents from the past,i did shut down my mac after i deleted them then turned it back on.
Have i done this wrong ? or can i just delete the 4 folders and documents also ?.
Thanks again.
Tetsy
Click to expand...

You don't need to search, just go straight to the two caches folders I mentioned and delete the contents of those two folders.

Open Finder then click the Go menu then Go to folder... and past in the two folder paths I gave you to get there.
 
Hi
I have done exactly what weasel boy said and deleted both those folders,But when i type cache in spotlight i still see 1 old cache folder ( cache - research ) should this folder be deleted also or is it needed ?.The other 3 are Album artwork,Clippings and starting points.
Thanks for your patience.
Tetsy
 
Tetsy said:
Hi
I have done exactly what weasel boy said and deleted both those folders,But when i type cache in spotlight i still see 1 old cache folder ( cache - research ) should this folder be deleted also or is it needed ?.The other 3 are Album artwork,Clippings and starting points.
Thanks for your patience.
Tetsy
Click to expand...

Unless you are sure what those are, I would not mess with them. The bulk of the cache files are in those two folders I mentioned. I see a couple files in an iTunes cache folder (I think that is the one you are seeing in Spotlight).
 
I used cleanmymac $37 and it worked well. Removed 4G of stuff off my new imac. So far does not seem to of broke anything. Coming from 10 years of constant mantainanice of my XP I like doing routine cleanups.
 
There are also system caches and databases that can be cleaned up. I've been using the free program Onyx for many years. It seems to know where everything is. Also has lots of "hidden" customizations you can do.
 
old-wiz said:
CleanMyMac is more like TrashMyMac.

Forum search shows people who had to reinstall osx adter running trash my mac.
Click to expand...

Well worked good for me. Everything zipping along fine. Just checked disk permisions and they are all fine as well. My guess with each new osx release it's prob best to ensure that cleanmhmac guys have worked out all the new bugs before you run it.

I'm surprised all the apple app developers don't scream louder. Each osx and ios is a total 180 from the one before in regards to how apps work. Every update the developers have to likely spend many hours fixing hundreds of bugs. I would not be a fan of that.
 
PicnicTutorials said:
Well worked good for me. Everything zipping along fine. Just checked disk permisions and they are all fine as well. My guess with each new osx release it's prob best to ensure that cleanmhmac guys have worked out all the new bugs before you run it.

I'm surprised all the apple app developers don't scream louder. Each osx and ios is a total 180 from the one before in regards to how apps work. Every update the developers have to likely spend many hours fixing hundreds of bugs. I would not be a fan of that.
Click to expand...

Most app developers don't try to monkey around in the OS files. CleanMyMac and others depend on undefined os features, and it is their own fault if they depend on it.
 
The problems I've heard with CleanMyMac is in removing foreign language files and other unnecessary(?) files from app packages that turn out to really be necessary. Frankly, deleting 4GB of files on an old MBA with a 64GB SSD might be worth the risk, but on a 1TB iMac (for example) it would only save 0.4% of the disk capacity and I wouldn't take any risk for so little gain.

Now I'd think that removing all the cruft from uninstalled apps might be worth it, but my understanding is that the performance gain is minimal. Luckily App Store apps seem to only leave stuff in ~/Library/Application\ Support and ~/Library/Preferences so it's pretty easy to clean up manually.
 
talmy said:
The problems I've heard with CleanMyMac is in removing foreign language files and other unnecessary(?) files from app packages that turn out to really be necessary. Frankly, deleting 4GB of files on an old MBA with a 64GB SSD might be worth the risk, but on a 1TB iMac (for example) it would only save 0.4% of the disk capacity and I wouldn't take any risk for so little gain.

Now I'd think that removing all the cruft from uninstalled apps might be worth it, but my understanding is that the performance gain is minimal. Luckily App Store apps seem to only leave stuff in ~/Library/Application\ Support and ~/Library/Preferences so it's pretty easy to clean up manually.
Click to expand...

Ya language files were a large bulk of it. So was old ios versions and app caches. Subsequent scans only found a few megs

----------
old-wiz said:
CleanMyMac is more like TrashMyMac.

Forum search shows people who had to reinstall osx adter running trash my mac.
Click to expand...

Maybe your referring to version one. Because googleing cleanmymac 2 for good and bad I don't find much bad. Only good things. I'm sure if I kept digging I can find some bad but from what I see I'm happy with my purchase.
 
Many thanks for all your replies,very helpful and eyeopening :)
 
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