How to delete the app's cache on a Mac?

[PaoloT]

Hi,

After a long session with Photo, I suspect that it is the reason why I lost some 20GB from my internal drive. I have noticed a marked reduction of drive size in the past, after using Affinity apps.

I suspect Photo, or other Affinity apps, create a large cache, and not always delete it. I would like to manually delete it, if this doesn't create problems.

The easily accessible caches inside ~/Library/ (named com.seriflab.xxx) are very small, so they are not the cause of my lost space. Are the big ones hidden somewhere else?

Paolo

 

[thomaso]

You can try to launch + close Affinity without opening any document. I noticed some cache data remain stored until a next app launch in case they might be used again. Another workaround to clear unexpected cache files may be to boot the mac in Safe Mode.

The document related cache files are stored in your user library, in folders named "temp" and "autosave". The folder path depends on the macOS and the Affinity version. It may be for instance…
"~/Library/Application Support/Affinity Photo/…"
"~/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto/Data/Library/Application Support/…"

One specific file that has been occasionally reported (mostly for Windows) to get huge and not be automatically deleted is called "PersonaBackstore.dat". On a Mac, it is stored in the invisible "private" folder on the startup disk, for example, its path may be "/private/var/folders/sc/t7vpbgl15nd3417_gpz532fc0000gn/T/Affinity Publisher/PersonaBackstore.dat". I suspect that the folder inside "sc" is individually named and may be different on different Macs, not to mention the different paths in different macOS and Affinity versions. For me, this file was 0 kB whenever I looked at it.

Another folder is in your user library cache folder and is called "com.seriflabs.<appname>", for example "~/Library/Caches/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto". To me it seems not to be used for user/document related data but for variable app content like its welcome screen, and is accordingly small.