How can I delete Thumbnail files on a MAC?
Asked by
cla (
1
)
October 17th, 2009
I have imported many photos from my PC to my new MAC and now am dealing with Thumbnail files which are not photos and therefore the MAC cannot bring them up as such. This creates an issue on the i-photo application which tries to recover the files every time it stars. How can I get rid of this (i.e. of the Thumbnail files)? Thank you.
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5 Answers
I can’t help you, but I know someone who can. In a day or two ill have them look at this.
What is the extension on your “thumbnail” files?
Just delete them, I don’t think they serve any purpose on the Mac.
WARNING—- IF YOU FUCK THIS UP IT COULD DESTROY ALL YOUR FILES… USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. I’AM NOT RESPONSIBLE IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG
Step one: Open the Terminal app in Applications/Utilities
Step two: Type cd /Users/your username/
Step three: Hit the Return key. Type pwd and hit Enter again.
Now you should see something like.
Last login: Sat Oct 17 18:48:03 on console
john-powells-imac52:~ johnryanpowell$ cd /Users/johnryanpowell/
john-powells-imac52:~ johnryanpowell$ pwd
/Users/johnryanpowell
john-powells-imac52:~ johnryanpowell$
OK… Now the hard part.
Find the extension that the the files you have and want to delete are using.
For this example I will make one up. I will use .BEREALLYCAREFULL
So now back in the terminal I would enter:
find . -name ’*.BEREALLYCAREFULL’ -type f -delete
The * is a wildcard. It can be anything and anything with the extension will be deleted.
I WARNED YOU. BE REALLY DAMN CAREFUL..
@johnpowell
Why go to those lengths? They are likely to be in one or two directories, not all over the hard drive. Spotlight can find them all if necessary and you can delete from there.
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