Stop cache from building up

Hi there. Every couple of weeks my Mac will run out of storage and I will have to enable the root user to delete a hidden cache in Library called com.apple.iconservices.store. It's getting really annoying and I just want to know if there's anyway to stop it as of now or maybe put a cap to the folder size? It's getting up to the 100s of gigabytes. I learned that this was my problem from here: What is com.apple.iconservices.store? I f… - Apple Community



MacBook Air 13″, macOS 26.0

Posted on Sep 21, 2025 9:55 AM

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Posted on Oct 7, 2025 10:54 AM

First of all, you're running a modern Mac with a 256 GB hard drive. Those are only suitable for some kind of single-app kiosk configuration. Maybe a card catalog computer in a library, or a directory listing in an office building. Someone who does nothing but look at LOLcat videos all days needs at least a 500 GB drive. You're using Xcode. You need a new computer - end of story.


Assuming you don't like that advice, which I would expect, what else could you do?


Double-check what's going on with those configuration profiles. I've never seen anything with just "com.apple." listed twice. Configuration profiles are a real challenge. They are normally only used by large enterprise users. Sometimes Apple uses them for odd things too, like ScreenTime at one point. But there are so many variations that it's impossible for me to debug them or even know what they should look like. I include them in an EtreCheck report to let people know that a computer has certain low-level customizations. Those two "com.apple." entries could be leftover junk data perhaps. I just don't know.


You've installed MacKeeper and then didn't correctly uninstall it. That's left the key, low-level system extension component running out of control. Of all the "clean up" apps, none has a worse reputation than MacKeeper. But ironically, the one thing MacKeeper does do well is uninstall itself. Perhaps you used some "app zapper" to try to remove it? Luckily, as of macOS Sequoia and Tahoe, you can now remove these orphan system extensions. Go to System Settings > Login Items & Extensions and scroll down to Extensions. Find the MacKeeper extension and click the tiny "..." button. You'll get a pop-up menu where you can remove the extension and then restart. This alone could easily fix the problem you've been experiencing.


Something else is unusual with Grammarly. It's showing up with a "/Users/***/" path. Normally, these apps install into your home directory and EtreCheck redacts those to show something like "~/Library/". You can see that many times in your report. But there's also a fallback in case something really funky is going on and it's showing some other account's home directory. Your report is displaying the fallback. That's really bad. That means that there's been some unholy cross-pollination between user accounts at some point in the past. Whatever caused this could also easily cause the icon services problem.


Your nominal I/O usage is at 393.98 MB/s. That's crazy high.


It seems related to your unusual CPU usage too. All those values are way too high. And there's update_dyld_sim_shared_cache, which is related to the simulator component in Xcode. This is something else which is barely two degrees of separation away from your icon services problem.


In order to recover this computer, you'll definitely need to erase the hard drive and reinstall the operating system. I recommend that you don't try to restore anything. Just setup a new account. Maybe you could use the iCloud trick.


However, this machine is never going to run Xcode. If you're not careful, Xcode can bring a 1 TB drive to its knees in a matter of minutes. I'm surprised you could even install Xcode in the first place, let alone run it. On my 1 TB machine, the Xcode and its internal data take up about 95 GB. And quite frankly I'm surprised it's that low.

33 replies

Oct 6, 2025 12:34 PM in response to etresoft

Again. It is NOT the root user’s fault. I don’t have any other “hacks” whatever that’s supposed to mean. I’m not really a technical user of my Mac and I don’t try to modify other things… If you’re suggesting an app is doing it, I have barely any applications on my Mac which I can also list in case anyone wants to check if they’re malware. I’ve already mentioned that I don’t have a device to back it up with and I also don’t have nearly enough iCloud storage for a backup (what makes you think I have iCloud+??)

Oct 6, 2025 10:28 PM in response to HWTech

I don't see anything out of the ordinary - they all look like system processes. I'll list all that there is:

Spotlight, com.apple, Terminal, ControlCe, Notificat, Finder, AppleIDSe, GeneralSe, System, WindowSer, siriactio. I noticed that some seem to be cut off and I've seen them in Activity Monitor. (ex: ControlCe -> ControlCenter, WindowSer -> WindowServer)

My screenshot indicates the second command, only including the process names.

Oct 7, 2025 12:28 PM in response to etresoft

I don’t really remember how I deleted MacKeeper, but I can reinstall it to try to uninstall correctly. Grammarly was installed by the App Store, so I would assume that it should be in the right place. I don’t really understand the cross contamination account thing, though. For the bit about storage, I think I’ll be fine. This Mac was a REALY expensive gift and I would never even think of buying a new one, I’m incredibly happy to have it. (I used to have a Chromebook 🫩) When the cache is not taking up all my storage, I have ~100 GB to spare which is perfectly fine for me. When I used Xcode it was always slow and I thought it was my problem in the first place. I’ve wanted to become an app developer for a while now so it’s pretty sad that it doesn’t work well. I’ll probably end up deleting it, hopefully I can find a guide that will clear up everything properly. I don’t notice high cpu usage regularly so I don’t know what that was about. I ran etrecheck twice and the first time I didn’t get the performance notices. If I did do a reinstall, which issues do you think it would fix? I was thinking about it and I assume it fixes things in the Library directory, where I would say most of my problems lie in… Maybe just a reinstall could fix my cache problem, I’m not too worried about the Grammarly and performance stuff.

Oct 7, 2025 1:37 PM in response to John Galt

How am I supposed to know not to install the most common apps from trusted developers? It’s kind of annoying that I can’t have Grammarly on Mac but it’s completely fine on iPhone. It’s a real headache and when my Mac becomes obsolete I’ll probably use windows because it’s ridiculous that I can barely download my necessary apps without a problem arising. $1k mac btw 💔


I won’t be erasing it

Stop cache from building up

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