Resolved Very large files in com.apple.bird

[pullman]

On my Mac Pro 3,1 (El Cap) the Caches folder (in ~/Library) is 119GB. The Adobe subfolder takes up 40GB which I would expect because I have a very large Bridge image database.

The folder com.Apple.bird is the main culprit at 86GB.

I understand it is related to iCloud and have seen people post that their com.apple.bird folders were very large due to WhatsApp backups.

If I search Caches for "whatsapp" only one folder is found and it's just 5MB.

The biggest part of com.apple.bird is made up of 189 files ranging in size from 240-660MB with one being 1,9GB. They are listed as "TextEdit Documents" and have alphanumerical codes as filenames. In total they are 76GB.

Interestingly, these large files have modification dates that are either 4 or 7 days apart.

Any idea what these big files might be and if they can be deleted?

Thank you very much in advance

Philip

 

[CoastalOR]

It is part of iCloud.
Check this thread (see Post #2):

com.apple.bird cache 23.8GB - what is it?

Just did a drive sweep using OmniDiskSweeper and caught a cache folder named com.apple.bird taking up 23.8GB of my tiny 128GB flash hard drive. Does anyone know what this cache folder is used for? Can I delete it in OmniDiskSweeper without damaging anything? Thanks.

forums.macrumors.com

The person in this thread erased the folder:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6603335

 

[pullman]

Thank you for the quick reply. Yes I saw those two links, but they don't unfortunately answer my question what the big files relate to. I should have said in the OP that the files are located in a subfolder ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.bird/session/g.

If the files are some sort of backup of what's in iCloud then I'd probably want to keep them.

If they are WhatsApp backups gone wrong - apparently WhatsApp doesn't overwrite backups, but creates new ones - then I would happily delete them.

Any other ideas what they might be?
Thank you in advance
Philip

It is part of iCloud.
Check this thread (see Post #2):

com.apple.bird cache 23.8GB - what is it?

Just did a drive sweep using OmniDiskSweeper and caught a cache folder named com.apple.bird taking up 23.8GB of my tiny 128GB flash hard drive. Does anyone know what this cache folder is used for? Can I delete it in OmniDiskSweeper without damaging anything? Thanks.

forums.macrumors.com

The person in this thread erased the folder:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6603335

 

[CoastalOR]

I do not know what the files are.

You could copy the 119 GB to a external disk (may involve some time) and then as a test do some deleting (try to keep track of what is deleted so you can restore it if needed) and see what happens. I think generally deleting Cache files are not real risky, but I would have a backup just in case there is a problem.

 

[pullman]

Thanks again. I found this Discussions thread with a suggestion by Linc Davis which worked immediately. Basically toggling iCloud Drive under Sys Prefs–iCloud emptied the contents of com.apple.bird.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6845669?answerId=27719960022#27719960022

To be on the safe side, I also disabled WhatsApp backups in the app's settings on my phone and also turned off WhatsApp as an app that may save stuff to iCloud.

Thanks again for your help
Philip