Why does my mac automatically saves images that i have no intention to save??

hi there!

Hi people!

Ive just purchased my macbook 4 days ago and i absolutely adore it. I was a pc user you see.. but am pretty psyched about the macbook . However, im beginning to notice a little problem which has been bugging me. everytime i search the Finder for images, i realise that there are images in my computer that I hadn't saved. I dont knw where they came from and it appears that my msn contacts userpics are automatically saved as well.. Some are even duplicated. And other images are like banners, icons, button images , either in jpg or pngs. Im worried that its just gonna clog up my space someday. yesterday, the count was 2,000 ++ pics! i had to delete them manually. but they keep popping up! is it a virus??? *gasps*

Any advice???

Much help appreciated

Where are these pictures located?

For example, where are the MSN/Microsoft Messenger pictures?


My guess is that they're cached images.


I don't know about every app, but I do know that Microsoft Messenger does store contacts' display pictures and other images at:

~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Microsoft Messenger Data/cache

( ~ = your Home folder's path )

And also each user's custom emoticons at:

~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Microsoft Messenger Data/[the user's MSN Messenger ID number]/CustomEmoticons


It should be noted, however, that the files do not have the file extensions .jpg/.png/etc. at the end of the file names.

The custom emoticons all have .dat as the extension.
The stuff in the Cache don't have extensions at all.

So basically, they shouldn't be normally viewable as images.

(However, opening them in Preview then Get Info does reveal that their formats are indeed PNG/GIF/JPEG/etc.)

What you're probably finding is the browser cache. These are temporary files used by the browser for when you use the back button and it wont have to re-download the page.

You can limit the amount of space it uses or turn it off completely in your browser.

It could also be from help files for applications, or in apps themselves (like in screensavers).

This is just the temporary cache. TEMPORARY.

It happens on every computer, you are just finding out now because you have Spotlight to find it.

i see... that is much clearer to me now. Noted. Thanks alot you guys!