large com.apple.bird directory

I have just erased this folder

"com.apple.bird directory"

with 54 GB and the MacBook Air runs faster and better. 😕

The same cache folder on my iMac is empty. Move it to the Desktop, reboot and see if there's any adverse performance for a while. If not go ahead and trash it. Since it's a cache folder it'll get rebuilt as time goes on if needed.

However, you do have a backup of your drive, right?

Might have found the cause, but need the confirm from everyone of you:
The files downloaded in com.apple.bird, are a few of different dimensions, repeated with different names every once in while. The sum of dimesions of every set of files should be the same.

The theory is that you have enabled Whatsapp iCloud backup, and the dimension of this backup should be the same of the sum of the set of files.

Is this happening to you too?

The solution would be to just disable Whatsapp iCloud backup. Let me know if it works for you as well.

@kikar7

I confirm that that is the cause. I already did delete that folder twice and after the last time i did turn of Whatsapp icloud backup. The folder is not growing that big anymore.

So yeah it works!

Yes, it looks like whatsapp backup is saving a new, complete file to this directory -- or it's saved on iCloud and it's copied down to your Mac, every day. I switched it to weekly now. That's got to be a bug. My daily file is currently around 300MB, so and each day it gets a little larger. So I have 20GB of com.apple.bird.. Will try deleting...

AAAAAAAllrighty weeks have passed and now My Apple.com.Bird directory is 114GB ... WHICH IS DEFINITELY WAY TOO MUCH

I saved the files on an external hard drive and deleted the folder "session".

After restart nothing happened. After one night in standby mode there are new files. I just opened the biggest file (160MB) and it's an archiv. In it a folder called "Media". In that folder are (very old) pictures from my messenger Apps on my iPhone (most pictures from Whatsapp).

I think the whole apple.bird thing is something for the icloud backup or so...

Mine was 114 GB .. I deleted it but kept a copy - have not experienced any changes by now 🙂 so just delete it - I also found the solution that I should reinstall yosemite cause it is some setting mistake about the reset of that bird application cache - we'll I did not do that - I was too lazy lol but for anyone who is interested in that solution restart while pressing cmd+r

I can confirm the answer of aerodyno.

I my case the folder is about ~33GB, and all the big files a COMPLETE daily backups of the Whatsapp App. Turning these backups off or changing them to weekly should improve the behavior of that folder, but to completely fix it I think we depend on Whatsapp to fix that and begin to make delta update of the backups...

Wow. At my side the size is 35+ Gb. Just move the contents to a folder on my External Drive. And will restart to see what happens - whether the Mac still functions...

Another thing I noticed is that since the laste El Capitan update (10.11.2) and the last iOS update (9.2) both my iPad and my iPhone lost space to the infamous "Other"-category (when you plug the iDevice in on iTunes). Just wondering if these two issues are connected: could it be that the ridiculous size of the com.apple.bird directory is causing to also increase the "Other"-category on the iPad/iPhone? So there's an hypothesis. What do you guys think?

Cheers!

Don't delete that folder. Instead, run

brctl diagnose

I run it and my folder went from 70Gb to 0B.

You should run this post also: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/220007/what-is-com-apple-bird-why-does- it-grow-so-big

Hmm, I just ran "brctl diagnose" and all it did was prepare a .gz file for me to upload somewhere. It actually reduced your apple bird folder? You sure you didn't also do something else about the same time? 😉

I have the same "issue". The cache is 2.66 GB large. What is com.apple.bird? Can I delete it?

Thx for help

CleanMyMac 3 marks the com.apple.bird directory safe to delete.

It does so automatically when I perform a clean.

Looks like after deleting the cache from that folder I have that issue with iTunes Re: Music.app doesn't display all the artwork