Deleting files for freeing the disk space

disk-space

My MBA (OS 10.9.5) is showing messages of full disk. So I checked the big files in the system. However I don't want to mess with system files as I don't know anything about them. So asking the fellow gentlemen, if it is safe to delete any of the following files:

  • snapshots.db 2.1 GB '/private/var/db/systemstats/snapshots.database'
  • swapfile1 1.1 GB '/private/var/vm/swapfile1'
  • sleepimage 1.1 GB '/private/var/vm/sleepimage'

  • general.svc 488 MB '/System/Library/Speech/Recognizers/SpeechRecognitionCoreLanguages/en_US.SpeechRecognition/Contents/Resources/lm/combined/general.svc'

  • dyld_shared_cache_x86_64 , dyld_shared_cache_i386 386 & 274 MB '/private/var/db/dyld/dyld_shared_cache_x86_64'

  • safebrowsing.db '/private/var/folders/s2/_szqd_q13kq9lyl32lv0jz7h0000gn/C/com.apple.Safari/SafeBrowsing.database'

It's not about the memory(RAM), it's about the hard disk space.

Also I'll be glad if someone can point me to which other junk files I can delete from the mac. I prefer to delete files manually rather than using any app but if there's any simple no frills utility app which works, I'll happily use that.

Best Answer

The sleepimage file can safely be deleted by the user. It will be recreated the next time the Mac is put to sleep due to a default setting which can be disabled. This page at TechRadar shows how to delete the sleepimage file, as well as how to disable the recreation of the file.

The sleepimage file is a snapshot of the contents of RAM taken just before the Mac is put to sleep. When the Mac is awakened, this file is used to recreate the RAM contents, ostensibly to make the process quicker.

Swapfiles will always be created, and there's little you can do other than increasing the amount of physical RAM in your Mac.

Please edit your question to indicate if you are asking about RAM usage, or if you are getting Startup Disk is Almost Full messages.

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