Google Chrome can be a space hog...

[Paddy]

Thanks to Tacit mentioning this on his blog recently, I became aware that Google Chrome is, among other things, a space hog. It updates itself regularly, and guess what? It keeps the old versions. So it was occupying some 15GB of my hard drive! Some think this is due to a bug in DivX, an extension a lot of us have installed, and that the solution is to go to chrome://help and click on "enable updates for all users" but I did that and it still seemed to keep the old version when it did the update. I'll check again in a few days.

But in the mean time, I'd advise having a look in your Applications folder - click on Google Chrome with the Control key held down and choose "Show Package Contents" and then navigate to Versions. You may be surprised. Or not...could be interesting to see.

Do you have DivX or not?
Do you have multiple versions of Chrome or not?

BTW - discussion of this, spanning several years: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues...l?id=126394#c15

[Xairbusdriver]

Nope and nope. And, thanks to you, the thing updated itself when I went to the Help section! It will update my version (52.0.2743.116 (64-bit)) if I ever start it up again.

[kimmer]

QUOTE(Paddy @ Sep 14 2016, 09:31 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Do you have DivX or not?
Do you have multiple versions of Chrome or not?

No on DivX.
Yes on multiple versions.  
My current version updated today and is: Version 53.0.2785.116 (64-bit)

QUOTE

go to chrome://help and click on "enable updates for all users"

Perhaps I missed something, but I didn't find the ability to enable for all.

I'm curious, is it safe to simply trash those older folders? I'm going to give it a try and see what happens. Answer: Chrome won't launch.  I'm now downloading a fresh copy.

[Xairbusdriver]

QUOTE

Perhaps I missed something, but I didn't find the ability to enable for all.

I think it's missing because you are already up-to-date.

BTW, ladies, what is the name of the "folders" or 'archived' files? I don't see anything with "Chrome" in it's name that is newer than 8/21/2016. So it doesn't appear it did any file/folder creating today, at least if "Chrome" is in the name.

[Paddy]

Jim, are you asking where all the versions are hiding?

Google Chrome (show package contents)->Contents->Versions - and the current version will be the folder with the biggest number, or the only folder inside "Versions". Versions is also where you'll find any old versions, should your Mac be squirrelling those away too.

As for the most recent version, 52 ain't it. The most recent stable version (ie: not beta) is 53.0.2785, which was released on August 31, 2016. So you're not quite up to date there, Jim.

[Xairbusdriver]

53.0.2785.116 is the version showing with Get Info. It probably upgraded itself the same day I posted last week. I assume the 53.0.2785.116 directory is the 'saved' version of the current app. The app and that directory have a distinctly similar name. The only thing in there is a .framework collection of files totally 204.5 MB. The current app is 402.1 MB.

The only other version is the 52.0.2743.116 directory of 197 MB. Didn't bother keeping the o;d version, so I don't know its size (I'm too lazy to reinstall it from TM or CCC!).

In my case, anyway, while Chrome is not completely deleting its old files, it seems to be cutting its space usage by about 50%. I suppose my neglecting the app allows me to not waste much space?!

Anyway, thanks for the tip, I now have ~197 more MB of disk space.