Do I need to worry about "Relocated Items"?

[ghanwani]

After I updated to macOS Catalina, I saw a folder on my desktop called "Relocated Items". I can't make sense of what's in there. Attached is Apple's explanation. Do I need to hang on to this folder?

FWIW, I'm on a brand new mac with only 3 apps downloaded -- dropbox, coconut battery, and chrome.

Thanks.

 

[jaybar]

I am puzzled too.

 

[Peadogie]

In my case they appear to be incompatible .plists, security settings ect. brought over by Migration Assistant. I moved them to the trash. If I don't find any problems after a couple of restarts I'll delete them.

 

[zorinlynx]

I had a couple folders in the root of the filesystem "/" and they were moved there. Seems storing user data in "/" is a no-no now. Not a huge loss but inconvenient as I have to update a few things.

 

[Sdahe]

I was going to ask about the same thing.. Im using a 2018 Macboook Pro 15"

 

[ghanwani]

This is what I find running du -k in the "Relocated Items" directory. I don't know anything about any of these files. 1st column is file size in KB. Any insights into what these are would be helpful.

32 ./Quarantine.lpdf/de.lproj
52 ./Quarantine.lpdf/he.lproj
48 ./Quarantine.lpdf/ar.lproj
40 ./Quarantine.lpdf/el.lproj
44 ./Quarantine.lpdf/ja.lproj
32 ./Quarantine.lpdf/en.lproj
40 ./Quarantine.lpdf/uk.lproj
32 ./Quarantine.lpdf/es.lproj
32 ./Quarantine.lpdf/da.lproj
32 ./Quarantine.lpdf/it.lproj
52 ./Quarantine.lpdf/sk.lproj
32 ./Quarantine.lpdf/ms.lproj
32 ./Quarantine.lpdf/sv.lproj
40 ./Quarantine.lpdf/cs.lproj
40 ./Quarantine.lpdf/ko.lproj
36 ./Quarantine.lpdf/hu.lproj
36 ./Quarantine.lpdf/tr.lproj
40 ./Quarantine.lpdf/pl.lproj
40 ./Quarantine.lpdf/vi.lproj
40 ./Quarantine.lpdf/ru.lproj
32 ./Quarantine.lpdf/fr.lproj
32 ./Quarantine.lpdf/fi.lproj
32 ./Quarantine.lpdf/id.lproj
32 ./Quarantine.lpdf/nl.lproj
48 ./Quarantine.lpdf/th.lproj
32 ./Quarantine.lpdf/pt.lproj
40 ./Quarantine.lpdf/ro.lproj
32 ./Quarantine.lpdf/hr.lproj
172 ./Quarantine.lpdf/hi.lproj
32 ./Quarantine.lpdf/ca.lproj
1260 ./Quarantine.lpdf
4 ./Security/System/Library/DirectoryServices/DefaultLocalDB/Default/groups
4 ./Security/System/Library/DirectoryServices/DefaultLocalDB/Default/users
8 ./Security/System/Library/DirectoryServices/DefaultLocalDB/Default
8 ./Security/System/Library/DirectoryServices/DefaultLocalDB
8 ./Security/System/Library/DirectoryServices
4 ./Security/System/Library/CoreServices
12 ./Security/System/Library
12 ./Security/System
1048576 ./Security/vm
1048588 ./Security
1049848 .

 

[weaztek]

The folder on the desktop is actually an alias. I tossed mine out since the files are elsewhere on the machine anyway.

 

[ghanwani]

The folder on the desktop is actually an alias. I tossed mine out since the files are elsewhere on the machine anyway.

Good point. The actual "Relocated Items" folder is located in /Users/Shared, but that doesn't explain what those relocated items are and whether it is necessary to keep them hanging around.

 

[saberahul]

Been using beta since day 1 and had a lot of files. Trashed both alias and folder and haven’t had any issues

 

[chscag]

I deleted them without any problem. The relocated items folder appeared during the beta and now again with the final release. As @weaztek stated since the folder is an alias the files are still somewhere. Apple will have to deal with this in a future update.

 

[whg]

If you follow the link on the desktop and then delete the folders with relocated items, you will not be able to empty the trash, at least this is what happened in my case. I found this helpful post:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250712783
Restart using recovery mode (command-R)
From the top menu bar choose utilities and launch terminal
Type df to see all the mounted hard drives since recovery mode doesn't mount your hard drive to / but to /Volumes/Macintosh HD (or what have you).
Go to your mounted volume, in there /Volumes/Macintosh HD/Users/<username>/.Trash and do sudo rm -rf *
Check with ls to see if it worked, it should.
Close terminal and restart again, trash should be empty

This worked for me to empty the trash!

 

[ghanwani]

^ Thanks, useful info. I'm still at the prior stage where I'm trying to understand why this was done in the first place before removing them.

 

[Peadogie]

Folow-up to my original post:

In my case they appear to be incompatible .plists, security settings ect. brought over by Migration Assistant. I moved them to the trash. If I don't find any problems after a couple of restarts I'll delete them.

If you follow the link on the desktop and then delete the folders with relocated items, you will not be able to empty the trash, at least this is what happened in my case.

Weird, I just deleted them from the trash. Maybe it depends on what is in them.

 

[weaztek]

My folder was only 32MB so I'm going to leave it because that's nothing.

 

[macrem]

Be careful what you do with "Relocated Items".

I was trying to delete my "Relocated Items" directory, but it also was not allowed. I cd'ed into the folder and started removing stuff, chown'ing files to my user, chmod'ing to ensure I had write permissions, then trying to delete again. I was using the find command with -exec. One problem I realized too late was a subfolder called X11 was actually a symlink to /opt/X11: what I actually inadvertently ended up doing by mistake was deleting all files under /opt/X11 via the symlink in "Relocated Items".

PS: whg's suggestion worked to delete "Relocated Items" (thanks!), reinstalling X11 from https://www.xquartz.org fixed the problem described above & all else is fine (phew!)

 

[M.PaulCezanne]

Still can't get to the bottom of this "Relocated Items" thing. I understand why the system is doing it, but I can't figure out what these files are for.

Users>Shared>Relocated Items>Security>System>Library>DirectoryServices>DefaultLocalDB>Default. Default is locked. After granting myself permission to view the contents, I eventually drill down to two .plist files with very strange contents.

I understand some folks just want to delete them. I'd prefer to know what they are and why they're there before I attempt to do that.

 

[dsemf]

Still can't get to the bottom of this "Relocated Items" thing. I understand why the system is doing it, but I can't figure out what these files are for.

Users>Shared>Relocated Items>Security>System>Library>DirectoryServices>DefaultLocalDB>Default. Default is locked. After granting myself permission to view the contents, I eventually drill down to two .plist files with very strange contents.

I understand some folks just want to delete them. I'd prefer to know what they are and why they're there before I attempt to do that.

If you post the plist contents, maybe someone will recognize what they might be.

DS

 

[jbachandouris]

I just dropped the folder into Documents and forgot about it. I tried drilling down into the folders within and I got a permissions error. I was like, uh...this is MY computer...but whatever...

 

[lakerchick4life]

I just updated to Catalina and I see the Relocated Files folder..can I just type it into Documents so I dont have to see it on the desktop is that OK?
Its already in Documents I moved it and I already checked to see what it contains and here it is:
there is a file called "What are relocated items
There are two folders, Security Folder and VM Folder
in the security folder there are two folders in that, coreservices folder and directoryservices folder
there are NO additional files in those two folders
in the VM Folder there is only one file something called "SwapFile0" and thats it..so should I just leave it in Documents and forget about it since its so freakin tiny or is it safe to remove?

 

[chscag]

As already noted in this thread, the Relocated Files folder is an alias. Just move the entire thing to the Trash and delete it.

 

[lakerchick4life]

As already noted in this thread, the Relocated Files folder is an alias. Just move the entire thing to the Trash and delete it.

Oh Ok thank you really appreciate the info. Just wanted to be sure what I posted above is OK to delete fully..I had read other threads about it on the apple forum and some were saying how deleting the files were not a good idea and they couldnt even get them to fully delete so just wanted to be sure I wouldnt have any issues doing it and that it was safe

Edit: All good I deleted the folder super easy no issues