DEVONthink 4.3.2, macOS 15.7.9 (24G830).
My ~/Library/Application Support/DEVONthink folder has grown to 82 GB.
77 GB of that sits in a single folder that I cannot account for, and I
would like a sanity check before I remove anything.
The path is:
Cloudy/Downloads/BE07CCA6-…/BC4B5EEE-029C-43D6-8443-8EC42F2762A2
BE07CCA6 is my “#Archive” database (74 GB on disk). Inside its Downloads
folder there are three package subfolders:
9B9EC499… 0 B — matches the PackageUUID my iCloud (CloudKit)
location has for this database
01AA5F28… 0 B — matches the PackageUUID my local sync store
(DTFileSystemLocation) has for this database
BC4B5EEE… 77 GB — matches nothing
BC4B5EEE does not appear in the PackageUUIDs map of any of my three
configured locations in Cloudy/Locations.plist (CloudKit, a local sync
store, and a WebDAV location). A grep for that UUID across every plist
in Cloudy returns nothing, and it appears in zero lines of Sync.log.
The folder holds 36,156 files, all .receipt bundles containing .items
chunks, and every one is dated 26 February 2026. Nothing in it has been
modified since. There is a matching manifest folder,
Cloudy/Manifests/BE07CCA6-…/BC4B5EEE-…, at 84 MB across 6,226 entries,
last touched 28 April 2026.
Sync itself seems healthy. All three configured locations completed
successfully this morning, and PerformGarbageCollection is set to 1 on
each. The equivalent Downloads folders for my other databases are all
0 B, which is what makes this one stand out.
My assumption is that BC4B5EEE is left over from a sync location I
removed or reconfigured at some point, and that its cache was never
garbage-collected because the location record was gone before cleanup
could run. Since it is attached to no location, “Clean Location” has
nothing to act on.
Two questions:
- Is that reading correct — is a package folder with no matching
PackageUUID in Locations.plist safe to consider orphaned? - Is there a supported way to have DEVONthink clean this up itself,
or is removing the Downloads and Manifests folders for that package
UUID in the Finder the right approach? If the latter, does anything
need to be done first (quit DEVONthink, verify databases, etc.)?
I would rather not delete anything inside DEVONthink’s own storage on
a hunch. Thanks.