CloudDocs folder oversized - can I erase some files safely?

Question

CloudDocs folder oversized - can I erase some files safely?

I'm on a 2016 MacBook Pro with macOS 10.13.5

In (User)

Library/Application Support/CloudDocs

there is a folder called

session

weighing approx. 35GB. Inside there is another folder called

(why r?) which contains a few thousand files, 99% of which are what seem to be incremental versions of the same Pages document.

Why are those files there? Can I safely delete them? (for your knowledge, I have already copied the original final version of the file elsewhere for backup, just in case).

What is the use of this folder (apart from being the iCloud Drive mirror on the computer's drive)?

MacBook Pro TouchBar and Touch ID, macOS High Sierra (10.13.4), /w Radeon Pro 460

Posted on Jul 22, 2018 3:46 AM

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Answer 1

Jul 22, 2018 6:34 AM in response to Barney-15E

Indeed, only Pages and Numbers documents were stored there and no one younger that 6-7 months.

It seems like something got stuck there.

I cleaned the folder from those 3.600 incremental copies of the same Pages document and effectively freed up 35GB of space from the disk ...

I recall having had some issue with Pages around the time of the last version of that file.

Pages was crashing after every edit made to a footnote.

Possibly the system was dumping a recovery file there every time.

I definitely didn't have 3.600 crashes on that document but ... about 3-400 yes...

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Answer 2

Barney-15E

Level 10

121,982 points

Jul 22, 2018 6:32 AM in response to NotationMaster

It's not a backing store for iCloud as that is in MobileDocuments.

That folder appears to be some sort of cache for application-based iCloud documents, the apps that have a folder in iCloud and provide access via iOS along with macOS.

Mine is only 8MB in size. It is also difficult to tell if those folders are actually taking up space as the files could be hard linked to the originals.

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CloudDocs folder oversized - can I erase some files safely?

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