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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 Jin
    Jan 12 at 3:20
  • Are any of these folders taking up significant space?
    – Gilby
    Jan 12 at 22:06

1 Answer 1

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.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.

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