Spotify's cache and your downloads are two different things
One comes back for free and one costs you your offline music. Where each lives on a PC and the setting that caps the first.
582 guides
Mac storage, explained.
What fills your disk, where it hides, and what is safe to remove. Every guide gives you a way to check it on your own Mac.
Desktop messaging apps download every photo anyone sends you
Three clients, three storage models, and one of them has no cloud copy to restore from. What each keeps on a PC.
Outlook keeps a full copy of your mailbox in one file
The OST can reach tens of gigabytes and one setting controls it. Where it is, how to shrink it, and what compacting actually does.
Zoom saves recordings to Documents at full size, and never mentions it again
Local recordings pile up in a folder nobody opens. Where they are, how large an hour is, and how to move them.
Steam keeps shader caches and downloads long after the game is gone
Games are the obvious part. Workshop content, shader caches and half finished downloads sit in library folders on drives you forgot you had.
Epic, GOG and Battle.net each keep their own installer cache
Four launchers, four caches, and the folders none of them clear. Where each keeps what, and what is safe to remove.
Your graphics driver keeps a cache per game, and it never shrinks
DirectX and the driver both cache compiled shaders. Where they are, why clearing them is harmless, and when it actually helps.
Adobe's caches are larger than the applications, and there are four
Media caches, previews, autosaves and installer files across every Adobe app. Which are safe and the settings that cap them.
Resolve's cache defaults to your system drive and grows per project
Optimised media, render cache and gallery stills in one folder. Where it points by default and how to move it.
An hour of screen recording is a lot of gigabytes by default
Capture tools favour quality and write speed over size. Where the files go, and the settings that halve them.
Lightroom previews can be larger than the photos they preview
Catalogs, previews and scratch files across the common editors. Which are derived and which are your work.
Worlds, mods and versions: Minecraft keeps all three forever
Every version you have launched, every world you have made and every modpack you tried are still there. Where, and what is safe.