iCloud is re-creating empty folders for old iOS Apps

Question

I recently navigated to:

Users/gruberbastian/Library/Mobile Documents

There I saw tons of old iOS Apps I installed on my iPad over a year ago. Those folders are empty, but no matter how often I try to delete them (rm -r 'foldername'), they re-create themselves.

I even cannot find them under the

System Preferences > iCloud > iCloud Drive

So for example I find a folder called

iCloud~com~FireproofStudios~TheRoom3

I type this in the command line:

rm -r iCloud~com~FireproofStudios~TheRoom3

Now the folder is gone, but after a few seconds, it reappears again.

How can I permanently delete old iCloud Apps and data?

UPDATE This is the Library/Mobile Documents folder

Apps like readdle~scanner~pdf (and many more) are not part of the iCloud Drive overview:

Answer 1

It would help if you would explain why you would like to do this. For example, do you just want to clear up the clutter on your disk? Do you want to erase every trace of deleted apps?

If you just want to save space, the relevant command is brctl which is part of bird. (brctl for "bird control", as Apple uses the metaphor of the bird flying through the iCloud). At least according to the official documentation, the closest command to what you would be looking for would be brctl evict, but this doesn't remove the folder, but instead remove the local copy. In your example, you would type: cd ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents brctl evict iCloud~com~FireproofStudios~TheRoom3

I would keep an eye on the brctl man page to see if they add that additional functionality for the future for getting rid of these folders entirely.