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large com.apple.bird directory

To be more specific: in "/Users/~user/Library/Caches" there's a "com.apple.bird" directory that's ~1.5gb. My Google-fu turns up virtually nothing on what this directory is, does, contains, etc. I'd like to delete it to recover disk space (not an readily available option to get an external drive or upgrade the internals).


Caches can be safe to delete because the app/process that uses it will rebuild it as necessary--sometimes. Is this a case where I can safely delete the "com.apple.bird" directory and move along?


I'm running Yosemite on a MacBook Pro (early 2011), 128gb storage.


Thanks in advance,

Jody

MacBook Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10), early 2011

Posted on Oct 17, 2014 10:18 AM

Reply
27 replies

Dec 6, 2014 4:15 AM in response to jodytate

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...

Jan 25, 2015 2:36 AM in response to jodytate

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

Mar 19, 2015 8:01 AM in response to jodytate

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.

May 27, 2015 6:03 PM in response to jodytate

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...

large com.apple.bird directory

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