Learn how to clear cache on Mac OS X. Delete your browser cache (Safari and Google Chrome), System and User cache instantly. Now, type /Library/Caches and hit Enter. A new window with all the information of the data used will get open up. You can choose after looking up the dates, sizes, or types of data which you want to delete and which. This data is known as Cache. It is just a temporary file created by apps, browsers and many other programs to help your Mac run faster. Hardware Caches include CPU Cache, GPU Cache and DSPs (Digital Signal Processors), whereas Software Cache includes Disk/System Cache.
- 2014-11-17 rm -fr /System/Library/Caches/. Will tell OS X to run your startup item some time after the standard Cleanup startup item. Now to clean your personal caches, you're better off using an applescript that launches during login. Share contacts from your Mac via iMessage or AirDrop; Click here for complete coverage of Lion on Macworld.
- Jan 12, 2020 Users/bettyo/Library. The Library folder contains many of the resources that installed applications need to use, including application preference files, application support files, plug-in folders, and ever since OS X Lion, the plists that describe the saved state of applications.
Boot ROM
When the power to a Macintosh computer is turned on, the BootROM firmware is activated. BootROM (which is part of the computer’s hardware) has two primary responsibilities: it initializes system hardware and it selects an operating system to run. BootROM has two components to help it carry out these functions:
- POST (Power-On Self Test) initializes some hardware interfaces and verifies that sufficient memory is available and in a good state.
- EFI does basic hardware initialization and selects which operating system to use.
If multiple installations of OS X are available, BootROM chooses the one that was last selected by the Startup Disk System Preference. The user can override this choice by holding down the Option key while the computer boots, which causes EFI to display a screen for choosing the boot volume.
The Boot Loader
Once BootROM is finished and an OS X partition has been selected, control passes to the boot.efi boot loader. The principal job of this boot loader is to load the kernel environment. As it does this, the boot loader draws the “booting” image on the screen.
If full-disk encryption is enabled, the boot loader is responsible for drawing the login UI and prompting for the user’s password, which needed to access the encrypted disk to boot from it. (This UI is drawn by
loginwindow
otherwise.)In the simplest case, the boot loader can be found in the
/System/Library/CoreServices
directory on the root partition, in a file named boot.efi
.Mac Os X Clean Library Caches
![Library caches Library caches](https://blog.pcrisk.com/images/stories/blog/2018/remove-applications-from-mac/delete-via-launchpad.jpg)
Note: Booting from a UFS volume is deprecated as of OS X v10.5.
In order to speed up boot time, the boot loader uses several caches. The contents and location of these caches varies between versions of OS X, but knowing some details about the caching may be helpful when debugging kernel extensions.
After you install or modify a kernel extension, touch the
/System/Library/Extensions
directory; the system rebuilds the caches automatically.Important: You should not depend on the implementation details of the kernel caches in your software.
Mac Os Clean
In OS X v10.7, the boot loader looks for the unified prelinked kernel. This cache contains all kernel extensions that may be needed to boot a Mac with any hardware configuration, with the extensions already linked against the kernel. It is located at
/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kext.caches/Startup/kernelcache
.In OS X v10.6 and earlier, the boot loader first looks for the prelinked kernel (also called the kernel cache). This cache contains exactly the set of kernel extensions that were needed during the previous system startup, already linked against the kernel. If the prelinked kernel is missing or unusable (for example, because a hardware configuration has changed), the booter looks for the mkext cache, which contains all kernel extensions that may be needed to boot the system. Using the mkext cache is much slower because the linker must be run. On OS X v10.5 and v10.6, these caches are located in
/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kext.caches/Startup/
; on previous versions of OS X, it was located at /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kernelcaches/
.Finally, if the caches cannot be used, the boot loader searches
/System/Library/Extensions
for drivers and other kernel extensions whose OSBundleRequired
property is set to a value appropriate to the type of boot (for example, local or network boot). This process is very slow, because the Info.plist
file of every kernel extension must be parsed, and then the linker must be run.For more information on how drivers are loaded, see IOKit Fundamentals, the manual page for
kextcache
, and Kernel Extension Programming Topics.Rooting
Once the kernel and all drivers necessary for booting are loaded, the boot loader starts the kernel’s initialization procedure. At this point, enough drivers are loaded for the kernel to find the root device.
The kernel initializes the Mach and BSD data structures and then initializes the I/O Kit. The I/O Kit links the loaded drivers into the kernel, using the device tree to determine which drivers to link. Once the kernel finds the root device, it roots(*) BSD off of it.
Note: As a terminology aside, the term “boot” was historically reserved for loading a bootstrap loader and kernel off of a disk or partition. In more recent years, the usage has evolved to allow a second meaning: the entire process from initial bootstrap until the OS is generally usable by an end user. In this case, the term is used according to the former meaning.
As used here, the term “root” refers to mounting a partition as the root, or top-level, filesystem. Thus, while the OS boots off of the root partition, the kernel roots the OS off of the partition before executing startup scripts from it.
Boot≠Root is a technology that allows the system to boot from a partition other than the root partition. This is used to boot systems where the root partition is encrypted using full-disk encryption, or where the root partition is located on a device which requires additional drivers (such as a RAID array). Boot≠Root uses a helper partition to store the files needed to boot, such as the kernel cache. For more information on how to set up the property in a filter-scheme driver, see Developing a Filter Scheme in Mass Storage Device Driver Programming Guide.
Copyright © 2002, 2013 Apple Inc. All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Updated: 2013-08-08
#Quick Guide
sudo atsutil databases -remove
atsutil server -shutdown
atsutil server -ping
#Extended Guidefrom http://doc.extensis.com/Font-Management-in-OSX-Best-Practices-Guide.pdf
##Cleaning the system font cacheOS X includes a command line utility for cleaning the system font cache. To use the utility, you need to log in with an administrator account.
- Close all applications. (Important!)
- Start Terminal (located in the Utilities folder; press Command-Shift-U to open this folder).
- Type
sudo atsutil databases -remove
and press Return. - Type your password at the prompt (no characters will echo back to the screen).
- When the process is complete, type
exit
to end your command line session, choose File > Quit to exit Terminal, then restart your Macintosh.
##Cleaning Adobe font cachesIf your font display problems are limited to Adobe applications, it may be due to a corrupt Adobe-specific font cache.
The different versions of Adobe applications create font caches with various names in several locations. Rather than exhaustively list the possible names and locations for Adobe font caches, it is simpler to use the Find feature of the Mac OS X Finder to locate these files for you, then delete them.
Mac Os X Library Caches For Free
The following steps set up the Finder so you can locate files in System folders that are not normally included in Find operations.
- In the Finder, press Command-N to open a new window.
- Press Command-F.
- Click the pop-up menu that shows Kind and choose Other.
- Scroll down the list of search attributes to System files, check the box in the In Menu column, and click OK.
These steps add the System files option to the pop-up search menu. You will only need to perform these steps once; after this, the System files option will always be in the pop-up menu.
###To remove Adobe font caches:
- Quit all Adobe applications.
- Open a new Finder window.
- Press Command-F.
- Click This Mac in the Search bar.
- Choose System files from the first pop-up menu, then choose Are included from the second pop-up menu.
- Click the
+
button at the end of the “System files are included” criterion. - Choose Name from the first pop-up menu, then choose contains from the second pop-up menu, then type
fnt
into the field. - Click the
+
button at the end of the “Name contains fnt” criterion. - Choose Name from the first pop-up menu, then choose ends with from the second pop-up menu, then type
.lst
into the field. Tip: Click Save in the Search bar to quickly perform this search again. - When the search is complete, select the files in the list whose name start with Acro, Adobe, and Illustrator and move them to the Trash, then empty the Trash.
The next time you open the a selected Adobe application, it will automatically create new clean copies of the font cache files.
##Microsoft Office font cacheIf Microsoft Office applications crash or freeze, display font corruption warnings, run slowly, or if you have font menu problems, then you may need to manually clear the Office font cache.
- Close all Microsoft Office applications.
- Depending upon your version of Office, remove the following files:
~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office Font Cache (11)
~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office 2008/Office Font Cache (12)
~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office 2011/Office Font Cache
- Open the affected Office application.
##Apple iWork font cacheIf one of the applications in Apple’s iWork suite is crashing after picking a template or clicking in an editable field, clearing the iWork font cache can help.
- Close all iWork applications.
- Move the following file to the Trash:
~/Library/Caches/com.apple.iwork.fonts
- Open the affected iWork application.