How can I *permanently* disable caches?

You can it like this:

1. Quit Safari if it's running.
2. Go to ~/Library/Caches/Safari and delete all the sub-folders in that folder.
3. Get Info on that …Safari folder and check the box that says "Locked".
4. Close the window and restart Safari.

Mulder

If I mess with that, it will cause the crashing behavior I described earlier.

It shouldn't. Did you test it? What you'd be doing is removing all the sub-folders where cache files are stored and locking the folder so items can't be added to it and saved.

Note that this is not in ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari. That folder seems to always be empty - it's a 'dummy' folder.

No, it's not a dummy folder, nor is it always empty. It fills up quite nicely on my machine and millions of others.

Mulder

Mulder,

Actually, with the arrival of Leopard, the cache scheme is completely different. Your signature indicates you are a Tiger guy and for you things are as they've always been. But Leopard's Safari cache is now located in /var/folders/IZ/(some really long gibberish)/-caches-. I think the long gibberish folder name may change from machine to machine for security reasons but I really don't know. Mail.app's cache is also in this folder. Leopard really is a cat of a different color.

lkrupp --
Fascinating!
Thanks so much for sharing that info.
So, if a person could not get Safari to stay open long enough to clear the cache,
what would be the path to empty the cache???

From the Finder type shift-command-G or Go->Go to folder...

/var/folders/IZ is the path. Within the IZ folder you will see another folder with a very long, random character name. Open that folder and you will a folder named -Caches-. Within the -Caches- folder you find the folder com.apple.Safari. Inside the com.apple.Safari folder are the files Cache.db and SafeBrowsing.db. These are Safari's actual caches in Leopard. This is also the reason some people are having trouble with Safari 3.2. If they have disabled Safari's cache using the terminal or a utility like Onyx, Cocktail, or any of the other Safari utilities that disable the cache then Safari 3.2 can't access the SafeBrowsing.db and apparently crashes. This is also why turning off the fraudulent website preference causes some user's Safari to start working again. And of course, a whole lot of people were obsessed with speeding up Safari and took bad advice to disable the cache, then promptly forgot they did so. Then when Safari 3.2 blew up in their faces they had no clue. Combine that with all the third-party add-ons and, well, you get the picture.

Trashing the Cache.db and the SafeBrowsing.db files may also be a good troubleshooting tool. But remember, we're talking Leopard only, not Tiger.

Thank you so much, l.
I copied that one!

~Bee wrote:
Thank you so much, l.
I copied that one!

As you may already know the /var/ folder is an invisible folder at the root of your boot drive. You can only see this folder from the terminal or by using the Go to folder... in Finder. If you opened the -Caches- folder you also saw that most Apple applications now have their caches in this folder.