Can I delete

Question

Can I delete

I have over 120gb of photos and videos on my MacBook Pro-13" (2010) - some 17,000 on my 500 gb internal HD. OK fine- but I also have a folder here: \Users\scschulte\Library\Caches\com.apple.iLifeSlideshow\Pictures
and in that folder is 2.2 gb of photos - 1178 of them. Can I safely delete the content of that folder? I don't have any slideshows (well, 1 with 25 photos in it) on my Mac--

Be nice to have a program that can "clean-up" my Mac a bit-- I think that exists - but would it find / indicate this folder as a possible TO THE TRASH candidate? (Is it?)

Thanks!

Best regards,

Steve Schulte
Tuesday 22 March 2011

MacBook Pro-13" (2010) PBG4-12" (2005) eMac (2005) G4733 (2001), Mac OS X (10.6.6), MacOnly since 1989 (Still run my Mac SE on 6.0.4)

Posted on Mar 22, 2011 6:58 AM

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Answer 1

Mar 22, 2011 7:01 AM in response to Stephen Schulte2

I meant to make the subject longer - hopefully this corrects it - I want to know about deleting this cache photo file-- thanks!

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Answer 2

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,402 points

Mar 22, 2011 9:40 AM in response to Stephen Schulte2

As this is a cache file, probably.

But... Caches exist for a reason. They speed up your Mac a lot, and are a core part of the OS. Are you sure you should be trashing it?

Regards

TD

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Answer 3

Old Toad

Level 10

207,733 points

Mar 22, 2011 1:25 PM in response to Stephen Schulte2

Move that cache folder and contents to the Desktop, launch iPhoto and try your slideshows again. Then check in the cache folder to see if those cache photo files have been recreated. You may find that they have been and you'll have to live with it.

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Answer 4

Mar 22, 2011 3:17 PM in response to Old Toad

Thanks! I ran a slide show with about 25 photos and voilà - there were 25 new photos in that cache file. A bit of a waste of HD space - I'm junking them all -- need to find other areas where my Mac is storing rather useless info that takes a huge amount of disk space…

Thanks again and it looks like a MacCleaner type program is needed!

Steve

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Answer 5

Apr 19, 2015 12:36 PM in response to Yer_Man

They may speed up the slideshow by a few nanoseconds but essentially, these caches are bad housekeeping and lazy engineering. There is no reason for GB of photos in that folder to be building up by unsuspecting users who have large or huge iPhoto collections. In my case, it took a long time to find out that this cache (not an iPhoto cache) was the problem until CleanMyMac tool found it.

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Answer 6

LarryHN

Level 10

106,110 points

Apr 19, 2015 1:27 PM in response to iRaindrop

Be VERY careful and always have a good backup - CleanMyMac is basically MalWear and very often removes critical files destroying iPhoto libraries or even rendering the Mac unusable

I personally strongly recommend against it or any other automated cleaner programs - use at you own risk and always have backup so you will be protected when the "cleaner" messes things up

LN

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Answer 7

May 7, 2015 10:00 PM in response to LarryHN

I TOTALLY AGREE! Indeed, I used this tool for investigating. Case-in-point: CleanMyMac 3 suggests to delete OS X localization files and has the gall to say "files you'll never use". Perhaps most of us won't except for those that need the localized option for their locale.

Developers, however, may need these for testing when they want to submit an application to Apple.

In addition, I disagree with the premise that core operating system files can be deemed as expendable by third-parties!. Space need by the user should be in addition to the space required by the OS. There's plenty of space and external drive options before resorting to cannibalism.

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