MacOS – have a ~ file in the root of the drive

filefilesystemmacos

I just noticed that I have a 2MB ~ file in the root of my Macbook HD. This wasn't here last time I checked (probably months ago,) and my guess is that it is from a system crash the other day or maybe from the upgrade to Yosemite.

What is this file and can I delete it without incident?

finder tilde file

bash tilde file

Best Answer

This seems to be an attempt to write something to the ~ directory, but instead has been written to the file /~. This file isn't required by OS X, but if an app is still using it then deleting it could break things. Make a backup if you delete it.

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