cleaning user and system cache

Just leave it alone, if it's running fine.
Mac is "self-cleaning" 🙂

EDIT: Actually, cache files makes your Mac run faster.



-mj

Message was edited by: macjack

Each app handles their temporary files in their own ways.

For safari, you can go to the File menu and empty the cache. Firefox is the same way, you can empty tempt files, cookies, passwords, etc. You can find out where the app's temporary folders are and clean them out.

Was there an app you were concerned about? Maybe a quick google will help.

You should read a little more details on such apps and decide for yourself.

I would assume it only cleans out the most commonly used apps.

If you have any particular software that may not be mainstream, you should read its manual. Some apps you shouldn't clean any of its data (ie. database). Maybe there's a "purge" feature somewhere.

Chances are it's your web browser that takes up the most space. It saves just about everything that you retrieve from the internet.

Other items may be system log files. These tells you some details on how your system went about. You shouldn't delete these. They are small and a good resource if you have trouble with your system.

Maybe time to upgrade to a larger hard drive?

Message was edited by: Supreme Virtue

Apps like Clean My Mac can do a lot more harm than good. Again, if your Mac is running fine, don't touch it. If you're looking to save space, look in /Library/Printers. You can delete all the print drivers except the one(s) you use.

Also, as mentioned, if your browsers should become slow you can delete those caches from the Safari menu, or whichever browser you use. Do not delete anything else, unless you are 100% sure what it is and what it does.



-mj

HI,

If you leave your Mac on one night a month (not in Sleep mode) between the hours of 3:15am and 5:30am in your time zone, it will run cron tasks (maintenance) *for you*.

If you don't want to do that you can force background maintenance yourself.

Mac OS X: How to force background maintenance tasks (logs and temporary items)








Carolyn 🙂

Do I need to be logged into my account or could the computer be on, but in Log out mode?

Carolyn does the command you noted to force cleanup work in Snow Leopard as well?

Yes.

Much better to force cron tasks with 10.6 as most 3rd party utilities haven't updated their software as yet.

I just tried to use Cocktail which was great on 10.5, but no go for 10.6.




🙂

HI,

I found a Dashboard widget that can do this job for you.

Go here. http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/status/maintidget.html

Download Maintidget. Click yes when it asks you to install the widge for you.

It might launch automatically, but if not, click the Dashboard widget icon in your Dock.

You'll see a black background widge with white text. Enter your admin password and click
Run Scripts.

Can take up to 15 mins. Do this monthly.

This widget can also tell you the last time scripts were run.




Carolyn 🙂

Message was edited by: Carolyn Samit

Thank You for the widgit, i didnt notice any difference.

Carolyn. Typed into Terminal the following "sudo periodic daily". I received a prompt that this could cause issue but to enter password to continue. I typed password but nothing showed up, cursor did not move and nothing seemed to happen. Library>Cache still has all kinds of files in there as well. Just curious if I should see something happening in terminal. Should I have used "sudo sh /etc/daily" instead? Thanks