quote:

Originally posted by Pipe Smoker:

That’s for iOS. I’m looking for CCleaner for macOS.
As clearly stated in my post that you quoted.

Strange. I clicked on the link and it took me to the page for "CCleaner for Mac."

quote:

Originally posted by 4MUL8R:

Have you just used the native shortcut command to empty browser caches? shift command e.

I tried to find where Shift-Command-E is documented, and I came up empty handed. Can you point me in the right direction?

^^^^^^^
I believe it’s Option-Command-E
But I didn’t have any luck with that either.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:

quote:

Originally posted by Pipe Smoker:

That’s for iOS. I’m looking for CCleaner for macOS.
As clearly stated in my post that you quoted.

Strange. I clicked on the link and it took me to the page for "CCleaner for Mac."

Double strange. I usually view SIGforum on my iPhone. When I click on TatorTodd’s link I always see:

CCleaner for iOS
Declutter your iPhone with a cleaning app from CCleaner

At the top of the page. Maybe I should view SIGforum on my MacBook, hoping that I’ll be taken to a macOS offering.

Perhaps the developer saves some money by selling directly rather than through the AppStore.

quote:

Originally posted by Pipe Smoker:

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:

quote:

Originally posted by Pipe Smoker:

That’s for iOS. I’m looking for CCleaner for macOS.
As clearly stated in my post that you quoted.

Strange. I clicked on the link and it took me to the page for "CCleaner for Mac."

Double strange. I usually view SIGforum on my iPhone. When I click on TatorTodd’s link I always see:

CCleaner for iOS
Declutter your iPhone with a cleaning app from CCleaner

At the top of the page. Maybe I should view SIGforum on my MacBook, hoping that I’ll be taken to a macOS offering.

Perhaps the developer saves some money by selling directly rather than through the AppStore.

I was browsing on my MacBook and the link I made was for the Mac. The problem is on your end.

^^^^^
If you had told me to view your post from a MacBook, and I viewed it instead on an iPhone, then I’d agree that the problem is “on my end”.
But you didn’t.

Still, thanks for the link. And now I know that the nature of a link can change depending on the viewing platform. Something that I didn’t know until now.

I’ll let you know how CCleaner does relative to CleanMyMac.

https://www.ccleaner.com/ccleaner-mac

browsed from linux

quote:

Originally posted by Pipe Smoker:
^^^^^^^
I believe it’s Option-Command-E
But I didn’t have any luck with that either.

It is Option-Command-E.
First you have to find hidden drop down directory file (DEVELOP) unhide it and then you will see under the DEVELOP a lot of commands including EMPTY CACHES. After unhiding mine is to the right of Bookmarks
FYI, when you click it, it does not blink or take you to a Cache file.

quote:

Originally posted by Pipe Smoker:
^^^^^^^
I believe it’s Option-Command-E
But I didn’t have any luck with that either.

Found instructions:

To unhide the Develop menu in Safari on a Mac, follow these steps:

Open Safari: Launch the Safari browser on your Mac.
Access Preferences: Click on Safari in the top menu bar, then select Preferences (or press Command + ,).
Enable Develop Menu: Go to the Advanced tab and check the box that says Show Develop menu in menu bar.
Confirm: The Develop menu should now appear between the Bookmarks and Window menus in the menu bar.
This menu provides various tools for web developers, including options for inspecting elements and debugging web pages

^^^^^^^
Thank you, SeaCliff.

Sadly, that didn’t reduce the ever-increasing number of “files scanned” reported by Malwarebytes.

Next: get CCleaner…

I bought CCleaner Pro for Mac (thanks, tatortodd). I’m liking it better than CleanMyMac (currently in its 7-day free trial period).

CleanMyMac’s control panel is glitzy (animated buttons!). CCleaner’s is plain-jane simple, easy to navigate, with more configuration control. E.g., cache and cookie cleaning options. I like it much better.

As for efficacy, I really can’t tell. Each claims gigabytes of junk deleted when I run one or the other after a one-day lapse.

App size and cost:
CCleaner Pro: 127 MB, $24.95/yr
CleanMyMac: 369 MB, $39.99/yr

CleanMyMac will go away when its free trial period ends on March 28.

Sadly, neither of them stops the Malwarebytes “Items scanned” report from increasing by ~100 files/day. I’m going to have to write my own software to understand the nature of that increase.

In the OP I stated that the Malwarebytes “Items scanned” report increased by ~100 items/day. I now know it averages ~165 items/day. That bothered me quite a bit. Those weren’t my files!

Years ago I wrote a bash script, “fnf” (find new files). It takes arguments “d”, a path to a directory, and “t”, a time limit in minutes. It reports all files in and below directory “d” that have been created within the last “t” minutes.
bash> fnf -d / -t 5 | sort >.all
produces a sorted list of paths to ALL files on my Mac created within the last five minutes and saves them in file .all

Examining the content of .all I identified a possible source of the ever-increasing Malwarebytes “Items scanned” report. It is this directory:
~/Library/Application Support/CloudDocs/session/i

Long term observation of that directory verified that it’s the primary source of the ever-increasing Malwarebytes “Items scanned” report.

So what is the nature of the files in that directory? Given the name “CloudDocs” in the path, I expected that they would mostly be binary files pointing to files in my iCloud repository. Wrong!
bash> cd ~/Library/Application Support/CloudDocs/session/i
bash> list_binary_files | wc -l
667
bash> list_text_files | wc -l
77413

So they’re mostly text files. Some are copies of SNOBOL4 programs that I’ve written, including very old revisions of the programs. There is NO use for such files in that directory; they need to be deleted. But how do I deal with 77K files?

Researching the issue, I found credible evidence that if the “session” directory is deleted the system will recreate it when the Mac is restarted. I had two hopes:
First, that a deleted “session” directory would indeed be recreated.
Second, that it would be recreated with far fewer junk files.

Both hopes were fulfilled. After restarting my MacBook:
Malwarebytes Items scanned: 24,328
(Down from ~103K)

bash> cd ~/Library/Application Support/CloudDocs/session/i
bash> list_binary_files | wc -l
0 (down from 670)
bash> list_text_files | wc -l
3 (down from 77,413)

Actually, macOS recreated the “session” directory almost immediately after it was deleted; prior to the restart.

When macOS detects user files that that have been created or modified, it puts a copy of them into the session directory. From which they’re subsequently moved to my iCloud repository. But sometimes files get stuck in that directory. This often gets them moving again:
bash> killall bird
“bird” is a system daemon that manages the iCloud repository. It’s immediately restarted.

After all that, remaining files in the …/session/i directory are immovably stuck. To deal with those I wrote bash script that deletes all such files that have been stuck for 48 hours or longer. That script runs every evening.

Now my junk system files problems are fixed. ~80,000 junk files are now deleted from my Mac.
Repeat: ~80,000 JUNK FILES DELETED!

There won’t be any significant number of junk files accumulating in the future. And I’ve learned a bit about the macOS iCloud management system.