I have an external drive formatted as APFS. It contains folders such as .PKInstallSandboxManager
, .Spotlight-V100
, .TemporaryItems
, .Trashes
, and .fseventsd
. Which of these files are safe to delete if I want to delete caches and clear up space? Are there any that are required for the file system to function?
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These are not required files. 1 is for installing system updates and system application updates. 2 is for spotlight indexing. 3 is for temporary items. 4 is for storing the files in trash, 5 is a database of filesystem activity mainly used by Time Machine to speed up diff and thus decrease overall time.– Joy JinJan 12 at 3:20
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Are any of these folders taking up significant space?– GilbyJan 12 at 22:06
1 Answer
.PKInstallSandboxManager
: If it has much in it, you should be safe to remove the contents.
.Spotlight-V100
: If this is consuming space and you don't want the file system indexed, disable indexing - don't delete.
.TemporaryItems
: Safe to delete contents (and follow with a reboot),
.Trashes
: Empty by deleting trash.
.fseventsd
: Don't touch. It contains file system activity.
You don't mention, but you might also have:
.DocumentRevisions-V100
: Used to maintain past versions of documents. Don't delete.