"Other" Storage in Mac OS Big Sur: Can I delete Application Support files?
Dear all,
Main Problem:
I have been dealing with the well-known "other" storage problem, a mac that overheats quickly for seemingly no reason and some other trouble (won't connect to wifi unless I deconnect the external monitor and turn of bluetooth and tons of issues with the Mail-app [although this might be connected more to the mail servers I'm using not playing nice with apple...]).
Context:
Hardware: MacBookPro14,1 - Dual-Core Intel Core i5 - 2.3 GHz - L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB - L3 Cache: 4 MB- Memory: 16 GB
Software: Mac OS BigSur 11.4
I bought this mac in March 2019 and did not have the other storage problem until I installed BigSur. To install it, however, I had to make space and went through all the classic steps, such as deleting trash bins, caches the downloads folder and what not. I did also use CleanMyMac at some point (which seems to be a point where opinion divides, according to my research).
Anyway, after I did the backups, made the space and so on (took me a day as I'm such a newb) and then installed BigSur I found myself with the "Other Storage" - and lots of it (82GB to be exact). Since yesterday I went through all sorts of steps again and I am now down to 66 GB. In that process I read about Google Chrome being an issue (kernel task and subtasks are taking up a lot of my CPU% which led me to an entry saying that might be due to Chrome) and so I deleted that too.
Right now I am going through BlazeApple 's tipp in this thread (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252063494?answerId=252063494021#252063494021) and looking for things to delete in my Library folder (inside my user folder). Which brings me to my current question:
To my current question about the Application Support files:
- May I delete some of the folders inside this folder:
/Users/username/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/Sources
it contains over a dozen folders that seem to be very similar. All named something like "69C2B89C-D5AB-440B-9284-01E54B932552" and containing two folders , "images" & "metadata" and some other files.
The "Sources" folder is 53 MB and 19 of them are in that first folder. I am assuming that the others are older copies and hence I would like to delete them. Also because some of them have not been modified in a long time.
Is this ok?
2.May I delete some of the folders inside this (Firefox):
I do use Firefox. Here the big space taker is right here:
/Users/elena/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles
and the folder is called "ph7dwww6.default-release" and taking up 55mb
3.May I delete some of the folders inside this (Knowledge):
/Users/elena/Library/Application Support/Knowledge
No idea what this is supposed to be, but it's taking up 23MB with "knowledgeC.db", "knowledgeC.db-wal" and "knowledgeC.db-wal-shm". Can I delete this, too?
Outside of this the big space takers in "Library" are the following (folders):
" Group containers" 18.84 GB
"Mail" 14.78 GB
"Containers" 638.6 MB
"Metadata" 281.3 MB
"Messages" 117.7 MB
"Caches" 193.4 MB
"Safari" 80.7 MB
Is there such a happy coincidence as that there may be any known folders in there that I can safely delete?
Thank you very much for any help and my apologies if this question was not asked in an efficient way (it's my first). I would be happy to share a "etre report" if that helps (tbh, i'll find out how to do it and then do it), as this seems to be something that a lot of people do :)
I speak German (native), Italian (fluent) and Portuguese (fluent) and I work with wine. Hence I'd be happy to repay your kindness in any of those areas if any apply.
Have a great day!