Ask Different is a question and answer site for power users of Apple hardware and software. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Doing some cleanup on my Macbook Air with a 128GB SSD looking for big files to reduce the space used.
I found something named com.apple.coresymbolicationd that is 1GB in the /System/Library/Caches folder I don't recall seeing it before. Running Mountain Lion.
What is this and is there a way to clear it?
By the way I am using DaisyDisk to show the files and sizes.
Symbolication means replacing memory addresses with symbols (like functions or variables) or for example adding function names and line number information. It is used for debugging and analyzing crash reports.
/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.coresymbolicationd/data was also about 600 MB on my account, so I guess it's normal. Deleting files in cache folders is generally safe, and /System/Library/Caches/ is even excluded from Time Machine backups.
/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.coresymbolicationd/data grows when, for example, sysdiagnose runs.
Jun 4, 2013 at 18:41
The files stored in the system and user Caches folder are there to speed up your Mac and a process will recreate them if you decide to move them to the Trash and reboot.
Most programs are well behaved enough to handle you deleting the files from under the running system, but I've also gotten into the habit of moving them to Trash and then rebooting to let the system recreate new folders if needed before deleting the files.
This core daemon is virtually undocumented by Apple and the one data file is likely an encrypted sqlite3 database file (or some other binary data store) for internal use by the OS to handle process control. You can look at the source code and system headers that belong to CoreSymbolication here as it interacts with the source for dtrace:
I had a big issue with the feeling something was eating storage in my macbook. My folder com.apple.coresymbolicationd was 90 GB and growing and it was filling the hard drive to death. After finding it with Daisy Disk (running a scan as administrator) I've deleted all "grow" files in the "com.apple.coresymbolicationd" and I've cleared 90 GB of storage space. After rebooting the macbook works fine, all my settings are the same and apparently everything seems to be to be alright. This might help those who have the same issue I had.
OS X El Capitan 10.11.3 it's safe to remove from terminal
sudo rm -rf /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.coresymbolicationd
With the help of a launch daemon you can clear this folder each time you reboot your computer.
Create a file in your home directory called local.rm.coresymbolicationd.plist using the editor of your choice with the following contents:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>local.rm.coresymbolicationd</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/usr/bin/find</string>
<string>/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.coresymbolicationd</string>
<string>-type</string>
<string>f</string>
<string>-exec</string>
<string>/bin/rm</string>
<string>{}</string>
<string>+</string>
</array>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>
<key>StandardOutPath</key>
<string>/var/root/local.rm.coresymbolicationd.out</string>
<key>StandardErrorPath</key>
<string>/var/root/local.rm.coresymbolicationd.err</string>
<key>WorkingDirectory</key>
<string>/var/root</string>
<key>UserName</key>
<string>root</string>
<key>GroupName</key>
<string>wheel</string>
</dict>
</plist>
Run the following commands from Terminal.app or the terminal application of your choice:
sudo mv ${HOME}/local.rm.coresymbolicationd.plist /Library/LaunchDaemons
sudo chown root:wheel /Library/LaunchDaemons/local.rm.coresymbolicationd.plist
Reboot. On this and subsequent reboots, files inside that folder will be deleted.
/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.coresymbolicationd/data that's filling up? Also, I know that it was growing really huge, for me, in the past. But keeping an eye on that location, recently I did not see it grow that big anymore. Dunno, whether Apple or a 3rdP cleaned up their act? (Meaning: while a very practical solution for old systems, this launchd approach seems like a bit of overkill to me now?)
Jan 23, 2020 at 15:57
data file (very large; half the disk!) and temp file with a unique filename (much smaller). As far as I know, launchd is still The Apple Way™ and seemed like the safest option. YMMV.
Not a problem to delete this cache. It is used by 3rd party APIs. Unfortunately, you can't disable CoreSymbolication.Framework without breaking something.
My best advice is to 'mac disable SIP' then
(1) explore which processes ('mac activity monitor') are using RAM and CPU
(2) explore user and system caches...
As a simple rule, you can (should?) trash everything in /System/Library/Caches and ~/Library/Caches... then just reboot and they'll be rebuilt as necessary.
