Strange files appearing on my finder?

[DougieCooper95]

Realised this was a recent occurance (been happening for the past month or so but never noticed anything beforehand).

It sounds like it's related to firefox by what I've searched up on google but I want to be safe. I've been paranoid that my mac's been hacked (I know it's incredibly rare because apple's security is usually top notch) because my computer has been acting very slow (it's a 2015 mac desktop).

These are the files I'm seeing on finder:

ac.files
log files
ac.sqlite
plist files
baklz4 files

 

[ferrarr]

In what folder are they appearing? What specific OS version is your Mac running?

 

[DougieCooper95]

In what folder are they appearing? What specific OS version is your Mac running?

Just on the This Mac portion. MacOS Catalina 10.15.6.

 

[Raz0rEdge]

Just on the This Mac portion. MacOS Catalina 10.15.6.

That is not helpful. Which SPECIFIC folders are these files appearing in? How did you find them to begin with?

PLIST files are preference files used by all Mac applications. SQLITE files are local database files used by some applications. LOG file are log files.

 

[DougieCooper95]

That is not helpful. Which SPECIFIC folders are these files appearing in? How did you find them to begin with?

PLIST files are preference files used by all Mac applications. SQLITE files are local database files used by some applications. LOG file are log files.

No, literally, they ONLY appear on the This Mac portion (next to recents), they aren't stored anywhere else. PLIST files and LOG files NEVER used to show up on this section of my mac whenever I searched for something, that's why I'm saying it's a recent occurrence. What about baklz4 files? Ac files? Pref.js (forgot to mention that)? This never happened before and I'm getting 90+ of these on my mac per day.

 

[pine man]

They are all definitely Firfox files. I have them on my Mac and can be traced directly back to Firefox.

 

[MacInWin]

ac.files
log files
ac.sqlite
plist files
baklz4 files

.ac files are automatic configurator files. produces by GNU Autoconf. I suspect those come from Firefox, if they are using GNU software (open source). It is very highly likely they are, so the .ac files are to be expected. Could be another application using GNU as well.

.log files are logs. Many things make logs. They are records of actions, system events, etc. Most logs are driven by the operating system. You can use the Console application to see the logs in context (Console is in the Utilities folder of Applications).

.sqlite files are generally database applications. sqlite is a small database application that is used by many, many applications as the main storage for data. SQL is Structured Query Language, and sqlite is a trimmed down version.

.plist files are preference lists. They are where the preferences you choose are stored for the application. Almost every application has an associated plist file. The system uses plists for the things you configure in System Preferences. Perfectly normal.

The one I don't know and cannot find is baklz4. "bak" is used for backup files, often, but I have never heard of a baklz4 file. Can you tell us what folder that one is in? What I did find was this article: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1189759 In that article, it refers to a jsonlz4 file from FF, which implies that maybe a baklz4 is some sort of backup made by FF?

 

[pine man]

which implies that maybe a baklz4 is some sort of backup made by FF?

It's full name is recovery.bakiz4 on my mac and contained within a Firefox folder called sessionstore-backups.

 

[MacInWin]

I would guess then that it is a backup of the state of FF at some point so that if FF crashes it can get back to where you were before the crash. Just guessing here, but seems logical to me. I don't use FF, so I cannot say for certain.

 

[MacInWin]

For @DougieCooper95, have you changed the preferences for Finder? If the files just recently appeared in Finder, it's not because the files just appeared, it's that they just started to be displayed. That would suggest that something changed in Finder.