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The Clean Up Pane |
Some applications automatically store precomputed information as well as statistical and historical data into internal files. This precomputation speeds up the programs because they no longer need to compute this data again each time the application is relaunched. Moreover, the applications can remember settings the user had selected in the past. These files are called cache files.
If a program crashes, information in cache files can become corrupted because only a part of up-to-date information was written to the files. Cache files can also become a privacy problem in case unwanted user settings have been stored. The feature Remove Cache Files allows you to delete cache files for different areas of the system. You can remove:
Note that removing cache files will temporarily slow down all applications that use caching because the applications have to rebuild their files.
The caches of several Internet browsers are part of the user cache area. If you delete your user-specific cache, you will lose specific browser caches as well. TinkerTool System visualizes this by automatically selecting the affected web browsers when you enable clean-up of the user cache.
Not all versions of all web browsers for Mac OS X are supported for cleaning. In case you are missing your favorite browser, or its respective checkmark is disabled in TinkerTool System's list, you should consult the documentation of the browser. Some browsers now come with their own powerful cache cleaning and privacy features.
Mac OS X uses internal tables that keep information about all fonts currently available on a computer, the character glyphs contained in these fonts and the list of fonts activated for the current user. This information is used to speed up the font system. Font Book and other applications may no longer work correctly if the information in these tables is no longer consistent. Among others, this includes the following problems:
Deleting the font cache may re-activate deactivated fonts for the current user account. It is strongly recommended to restart the system immediately after the font cache has been deleted and then to launch Font Book to check the font configuration and preferences for the current user.
Mac OS X maintains several log files that keep information about the system's activities. If the periodic maintenance tasks are run, log files are automatically archived when they reach a certain size or age. You can remove the log file archives to reclaim some storage space. Press the button Delete at Remove Log Archives to do this. If you set a checkmark at Also delete archives of connect time accounting, this function will additionally remove archived copies of the database Mac OS X uses to keep track of how long users are connected with the system.
To store the view options of Finder windows, the Finder creates hidden files named ".DS_Store" in every folder you have opened. You can delete these files with the Remove Finder Information Files feature:
Deleting these files will remove all presentation options the Finder had stored in the affected folders. This includes comments, custom folder icons, icon positions and some other view options the Finder uses to display the folders' contents.
Some Mac OS X applications continue to use a technique inherited from the classic Mac OS: They store additional information connected with a file to an invisible second data stream known as "resource fork". When you move or copy a file, you are transfering this additional information with it.
The Macintosh HFS or HFS+ file systems ("Mac OS Extended") and the AppleShare AFP file service have special features to handle Macintosh resource forks. These features are not available in other file systems and networks. However, Mac OS X automatically emulates resource forks on file systems that do not natively support this. The emulated forks and certain extended Finder attributes are stored to invisible files having names beginning with "._" (dot underscore). These files can cause confusion when transfering data to other operating systems, for example when burning CD-ROMs or when storing files on a non-Apple file server. For this reason, TinkerTool System allows you to remove emulated resource fork files:
You should only remove resource fork emulation files if you are sure that the forks they represent are not needed by the Mac OS application that created them. The emulation files may also contain type, creator and Finder information.
If you like to remove native resource forks, please use the respective item in the pane Files.
To support features of the Finder and to remain compatible with the classic Mac OS, the operating system is creating many hidden files and folders when a volume is connected to a Macintosh computer. A volume can be a removable disk, or a storage medium which behaves like a disk, e.g. a flash card or a memory stick.
These hidden objects can become visible when the disk is connected to another operating system or computer at a later time. This can cause confusion for users of computer systems not working with Mac OS X. For this reason you might want to clean a volume before you give it away to a "foreign" system.
By deleting the Macintosh support files you will of course lose some information Mac OS X had collected on the affected volume. This includes the following data:
The data files themselves will always remain untouched. To clean a volume, perform the following steps:
The technology used in Mac OS X for controlling and administrating printers is based on the Common Unix Printing System (CUPS). When a document should be printed to a printer, the complete data stream containing the processed print information is temporarily stored onto file by the operating system to transfer the data step by step. When an error occurs during print output, it can happen in some cases that the temporary file is not removed again and still needs considerable storage space on your hard disk.
To remove all print outputs that have been kept by your system for more than one week, press the button Delete on the pane Remove Temporary Common Unix Printing System (CUPS) Files and follow instructios.
When a running application falls into an invalid state, Mac OS X will notice this immediately and terminate the application. Usually, only a report about the incidence will be written to file, and the message that an application has unexpectantly quit will appear on screen.
Some applications however, can be equipped with additional instructions to write a complete copy of the main memory belonging to the system kernel to file for diagnostic purposes. Software developers then can examine this file to find out in what exact state the operating system was in when the crash occurred. Such files are called post-mortem core dumps. They typically need more than 100 MByte storage space per copy.
If you no longer need those files for diagnostic purposes, you can delete them. Press the button Delete on the pane Remove Core Dump Files to do this.