Large genp.bt3 file taking up space (Mojave)

Hi All


I've been trying to to clean up my Mac and gain some space in the process. I have discovered a folder called KeychainV0-tomb in Application Support that has 50GB which is 1/5th of myMac's overall storage (big chunk). I have done some research and have found a solve suggested on this forum 5 years ago (screenshot below) - I have tried it but unfortunately it doesn't work. Would anybody be able to advise on how to get rid of/ decrease its contents?


I'd be grateful for any help.


Thank you,

Aleksandra

MacBook Pro 13", macOS 10.14

Posted on Nov 24, 2019 12:16 PM

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5 replies

Nov 24, 2019 1:34 PM in response to aleksandra69

What do you mean by "didn't work"? What happened when you tried dragging the weird file to the trash?


I've no idea about whether this is a good idea or bad idea, so can't offer any advice about trashing it, but seems pretty straight forward on what he's asking you to do. Keep in mind this was over 4 years ago, long before Mojave came into being.


What exactly is taking up the 50GB of disk?


Good luck...

Nov 24, 2019 8:16 PM in response to dot.com

Thanks for your response - and apologies for not explaining it clearly to start with. When I drag the subfolder he talk about in his post from a few years back into the Bin and empty it, the Keychains folder immediately recreates that subfolder - making it virtually impossible to remove it in line with those instructions.


From all the research I have done, it seems like it is related to iCloud Keychain but I can't tell what it is - genp.bt3 is a Document file but when I try to open it, I get a message saying 'there's no application set to open this document.;


Thanks so much for your time!

Nov 25, 2019 4:37 PM in response to aleksandra69

Well, the subfolder re-creation is fine and normal as that is the purpose of that folder, but does it also recreate the 50GB file? I would doubt it, but that's the point of the exercise. The only mention of a file with ".bt3" extension I found on a Google search is something about Control Runner by MomSoft -- does that ring a bell? If you use these commands in Terminal:


cd folder-that-contains-bt3-file
file genp.bt3


what is the response?


Good luck...

Dec 19, 2019 12:24 PM in response to nikioftime

I actually had a chance to drop into an Apple store yesterday - and the lovely man there was puzzled by the whole thing just as much as I was. After that, he suggested for the file to be deleted (firstly, he unticked Keychain in iCloud settings) - and voila, cleaned 50GB and the computer/ system is working fine.


Doesn't necessarily help crack what the problem is - but ultimately it helped me solved the main problem which was reclaiming some space on disk.

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Large genp.bt3 file taking up space (Mojave)

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