Time Machine Keeps Backing up huge /Safari/LocalStorage

[shinji]

Ever since upgrading to Mojave, Time Machine backs up my entire /Users/myuser/Safari/LocalStorage/ (which is ~800 mb) every hour it runs. I noticed this by running:
sudo fs_usage -f -R filesys backupd

It's backing up very old files that haven't changed in over a year. This either never happened on High Sierra and below, or it didn't try to backup the entire folder every hour.

It's very annoying because I hear my external hd spin up and run for a while. Is there any reason I shouldn't exclude this folder from Time Machine backups? When I go to add it as an exclusion, there's a little red mark in the corner of that file.

Or should I try something else entirely?

 

[auxbuss]

A few things to check:

First, I presume you mean `~/Library/Safari/LocalStorage`

Second, what's in that directory that's so large? (fwiw, mine is a tiny 2.2Mb in size.)

Third, it might be worth switching on the `Develop` menu item (see Prefs/Advanced) and running `Empty Caches`.

Observation: When I looked in that directory, I found a long ago deleted extension; so, I simply manually deleted it from the directory, since it no longer appears in Safari.

HTH