Re: Should we be worried about folder Biome, and the BiomeAgent and biomesyncd processes?

If you think this is the only secretive, undocumented thing in macOS, you are quite mistaken. The entire OS is replete with such things and always has been. Apple has a history of documenting little, and speaking publicly about it even less.

OT: It looks like a graveyard. On my Mac this folder is small, only empty folders and subfolders, just 200MB of storage, but there are 106 folders called "tombstone", when I drill down through the nested folders. 😀

I want to know too.

/Users/XX/Library/Biome/streams/restricted/ThirdPartyAppContent/local/tombstone

has 480 16Mb files totaling 8Gb

4Gb in the same location in another account in the same computer.

All created the same day 11/9.

Can't find any information regarding what it is.

ststefa wrote:

Can it be turned off?

Not easily.

What functions will be lost as a result?

No clue.

Is this data made available to anyone?

To you, in the form of more a more useful and meaningful user experience.

I am quite concerned about the fact that some Apple magic is preventing access to the data in ~/Library/Biome.

There is no Apple magic preventing access to data in ~/Library/Biome. It's your data. As they say on the internet, move fast and break things. If you start randomly deleting data in a "Library" folder, you will break things.

Combined with the fact that there doesn't seem to be any noteworthy documentation about this feature, this doesn't exactly breed confidence in the Apple operating system.

The Apple operating system does not breed confidence, it breeds money. If you don't have confidence, you are free to use some other kind of system. Have you been to an Apple Store lately? They aren't hurting.

ststefa wrote:

Confidence is not something that you have (unless you're naive), it is something that is earned, for example by being transparent.

I can assure you that being transparent is a bad idea. The normal people you would be wanting to have confidence in your system through your transparency don't care. Most efforts at transparency will be used against you by malicious actors. I am telling you this from direct, personal experience.

I would argue it should be in Apples best interest to be transparent. I'd go as far as to claim that an intransparent system has a severe problem longterm. We're living in the age of connectedness. An intransparent system digs its own grave.

As I said above, you are free to use any products you want. If you aren't happy with Apple's opacity, you can use something else. Your complaints are futile. Your continued use of Apple's products demonstrates your acceptance of Apple's policies far more than any posts on a user-to-user support forum ever will. It's not about confidence or connectedness, it's about money. Your money, now in Apple's bank account, speaks louder than your internet posts ever will.

Apple's most recently quarterly financial results were $19.4B in profit from $83B in revenue, both higher than expectations. That's hardly "one foot in the grave" territory.

PS: If you want to explore that Biome folder in Terminal, you'll need to give Terminal Full Disk Access. Malware, adware, and trackers will thank you for your transparency.

Tread carefully in the catacombs. You might run into a wild cat.

Just to add, ~/Library/Biome is in Monterey as well.

I have just found this Biome folder consuming 1GB in my disk (MacOS Ventura). I realize about it because my Virus Barrier Scanner showed related files unaccessible. Not sure what is going on here.