Cleaning up a mystery folder
QI’ve recently been doing some housekeeping, and discovered the IdentityServices folder in my Home folder Library is huge, with many files in a folder inside it. What causes this to happen, and is it safe to clean those up?
ANormally this folder, ~/Library/ IdentityServices, contains around 20-30 items, although as they’re mostly databases, they can grow over time to occupy a few megabytes of storage. Before trying to clean anything up, you should discover what’s creating all those files inside that folder.
The best way to do that is using Hazel, a utility from noodlesoft.com. This lets you set folders to be watched for any changes such as files being added to them, and notify you of what has changed there. Observing those changes should give tell-tale clues as to which app or service might be doing this and why it isn’t cleaning the files up afterwards.
Hazel is also an excellent way to keep a watch on sensitive folders, such as LaunchAgents and LaunchDaemons in the main Library folders and in your Home folder Library, which are commonly abused by malware.
There’s nothing sinister about the IdentityServices folder, which is used to provide info about identities on your Mac, and a legitimate part of macOS. However, there’s certainly something odd – if not wrong – about software that’s writing so many files there.