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nelly22

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 29, 2009
366
5
I just found in my preferences folder some strangely named files.

com.elgato.eyetv.plist.42KTas4

Size is 0 kb.

What are these? Maybe these are created when Mac crashes?
 

treekram

macrumors 68000
Nov 9, 2015
1,849
411
Honolulu HI
EyeTV (by Elgato) is DVR software so apparently it was installed on your computer at some time in the past. It may have been bundled with some video/game recording hardware.
 

fisherking

macrumors G4
Jul 16, 2010
11,252
5,563
ny somewhere
no real reason to mess around in the preferences folder, and a file thats 0 kb is not taking up any space (of course). i've seen that here, with apps that crash, then i get a number of dupes with end codes like that. if the app (ie in this case, the elgato eye tv) is something you use...leave it there.
 

T'hain Esh Kelch

macrumors 603
Aug 5, 2001
6,478
7,433
Denmark
They are preference files used by applications. I know it is quite the surprise, given that they are in a folder named "Preferences"....
 

fisherking

macrumors G4
Jul 16, 2010
11,252
5,563
ny somewhere
They are preference files used by applications. I know it is quite the surprise, given that they are in a folder named "Preferences"....

that's a useless post. in the past, i have found files like the OP's, sometimes numerous ones with different added letters/numbers at the end (after 'plist'). that's what we're discussing here...
 

treekram

macrumors 68000
Nov 9, 2015
1,849
411
Honolulu HI
The OP's post is a bit ambiguous. Are they aware of what EyeTV is or are they concerned with the extension? I thought it was the former, could very well be the latter. EyeTV does have multiple files in the Preferences directory.
 

NoBoMac

Moderator
Staff member
Jul 1, 2014
6,289
4,989
Not recommending this unless one REALLY knows what they are doing and have a good backup...

Can look at the timestamps on the file(s). Something that's old (something older than last reboot), might be safe to delete. As mentioned earlier, could be left overs from crashes/force quits, program not cleaning up after itself, etc.

But also as previously mentioned, what's the big diff? Zero length file, and Library folder should not be visited often, so not like going to be seeing the clutter everyday/week/month.
 

Weaselboy

Moderator
Staff member
Jan 23, 2005
34,482
16,197
California
I just found in my preferences folder some strangely named files.

com.elgato.eyetv.plist.42KTas4

Size is 0 kb.

What are these? Maybe these are created when Mac crashes?

Common issue and you can delete all the ones with the gibberish at the end. What is happening is when you save preferences it creates a temp copy of the file to save the changes to, and there is a bug where that temp file is not getting erased after the save operation.

You can see a few here on my system. To me, this seems to be much less frequent under El Capitan.

Screen Shot 2016-01-14 at 10.35.49 AM.png
 

fisherking

macrumors G4
Jul 16, 2010
11,252
5,563
ny somewhere
Common issue and you can delete all the ones with the gibberish at the end. What is happening is when you save preferences it creates a temp copy of the file to save the changes to, and there is a bug where that temp file is not getting erased after the save operation.

You can see a few here on my system. To me, this seems to be much less frequent under El Capitan.

View attachment 610487

it hasn't happened to me in years, but (just mentioning this), i had a dozen of those plists for an app, deleted all the 'oddly named' ones, and the app would not open, i had to re-install it. my feeling is, the last-opened one is important (and, in the case of your image, the one without gibberish at the end IS the last-opened one...).
 

Weaselboy

Moderator
Staff member
Jan 23, 2005
34,482
16,197
California
it hasn't happened to me in years, but (just mentioning this), i had a dozen of those plists for an app, deleted all the 'oddly named' ones, and the app would not open, i had to re-install it. my feeling is, the last-opened one is important (and, in the case of your image, the one without gibberish at the end IS the last-opened one...).
I was not suggested deleting everything in my screenshot. I was just showing a shot with some of those files. The ones with gibberish are all empty and can be deleted. Even if you deleted the real plist (com.apple.spaces.plist in my shot) it would be recreated when you launched the app. If you had an app that would not launch after this, you may have deleted something else.
 
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