com.apple.bird eating up my disc space

[orschinger]

Hey everybody,

my system is telling me, that I'm running low on free disc space. why is it, that some 177GB (!) are being clogged up by library/cache/com.apple.bird (see screenshot)

can I just delete the entire folder?

any help is appreciated!

alex

 

[keysofanxiety]

It's iCloud, but still saves a lot of stuff locally. I imagine you're on Sierra? It backs up the Documents & Desktop to iCloud by default.

You can have a look in your iCloud settings in System Preferences and disable the documents backup to see if that makes a positive difference. Even if you don't have that option enabled, it's definitely something iCloud related, so there may be a sync error or some weird duplicating bug.

Others have said that disabling WhatsApp backing up to iCloud (if you have WhatsApp installed) fixes this problem.

 

[orschinger]

Thanks for the quick reply! Yeah, my iCloud is configured to back up Documents & Data, I actually like it that way. I've had the "bird" problem before and turning on/off iCloud document backup completely messed up my data, so in the end I had to restore an old backup from my Time Machine last time around :-/

Hm, WhatsApp? I actually do back it up to iCloud. Do you know, where I can find some more information? Thanks again!

 

[keysofanxiety]

Hm, WhatsApp? I actually do back it up to iCloud. Do you know, where I can find some more information? Thanks again!

You can disable WhatsApp backing up to the cloud by reviewing these steps: http://ioshacker.com/how-to/permanently-delete-whatsapp-backups-icloud

This should then resolve the problem. If it doesn't, you can delete that folder without concern and the problem shouldn't reoccur.

 

[Melia1661]

I accidentally quitted bird in activity monitor, and now I have less space than ever! PLEASE HELP SOON!