Google Chrome takes 6 GB of my hard disk

Dear friends:

Cleaning my Mac, I discovered that Google Chrome Browser takes 6 GB of my
hard disk. Is this OK?

I use it very seldom.

 

Something sounds out of whack. My Google Chrome browser with a few
Google apps takes up less than 1Gb.

 

How exactly did you come to the conclusion that it takes 6 GB?

 

How did you determine that?

 

There are cache files, which I clean out fairly regularly, but that's in
the Advanced Preferences as well as the Chrome Menu settings. If you
don't clear it, I don't know what it does before it cleans things out.

 

I noticed a similar thing recently. It turns out that when Chrome
updates itself, it also keeps a copy of the previous version. These can
mount up to a large total, but can safely be deleted.

Control-click on Chrome and Open Package Contents. I forget exactly
where the copies are, I think they may be in Contents, Mac OS, with the
name Google Chrome followed by some letters and numbers.

 

Dear Jolly & friends:

I opened in Finder the Application folder, and I clicked the Size tab.
Chrome went to the first place with 6 GB.

 

<
iganews.com>,

OK, then there's a problem with your system. I'm running Google Chrome
30.0.1599.101 which is 146,510,624 bytes, according to Get Info.

If I were a paranoid kinda person, I'd start by replacing your copy of
Google Chrome. Either it's corrupt or your system got munged or
something isn't kosher.

If I was really paranoid, I'd reload my entire system, not trusting
anything. But I threw out my Aluminum foil hat (tin foil is impossible
to find these days).

 

<
iganews.com>,

So use option-click to View Package Contents and see where all the space
is going. Incidentally, my Google Chrome takes 299 MB.

 

292.4 MB here.

 

Looks like they're in Contents->Versions. I see two folders, the current
version and the previous version. They each take about 150 MB. There
would have to be 40 versions to add up to 6 GB.

If that's what's causing the OP's problem, I wonder why it's not
deleting older versions when it's auto-updating.

 

Thanks, but I wasn't asking you.

 

<
iganews.com>,

Google apps are Trojan horses to a degree. They're free in exchange for
telling Google about everything about how you use them. All of them
install system daemons that keep the applications updated, and it's
buggy. You can hunt down the daemons and remove them but launching any
Google app will replace them.

The bugs that I've seen so far:

- Excessive network use
- High CPU use
- Interference with the Power Manager, causing random sleeps or refusal
to sleep.

It could be leaking data when it's performing updates too.


I nuked all the Google software because I was hitting the random sleep
bug.

 

That's really weird. After updating, my version goes down to one copy in
/Applications/Google Chrome/Contents/Versions/.

 

I assumed it kept the previous version around to make it easier to undo
if there's a problem.

 

The difference between its' keeping one or two versions might depend on
whether you're using the release or beta application. I'm running the
beta, and have two versions stored (just now it was three, but then it
did an update and deleted the oldest).

 

Odd. Mine ius 28.0.1500.72 (Google Chrome is up to date).

It's ~250MB

I have 21.0.1180.67 and 28.0.150.71 in .../Contents/Versions

 

I was thinking the same thing. I'm also running the Beta, and I have
31.0.1650.48 and 32.0.1700.6. The expectation may be that beta testers
are more likely to need to back out the latest revision.

I just noticed that these are not the same as the two versions I saw
when I posted earlier. 31.0.1650.48 is what I'm running, and earlier it
was the higher version, now it's the lower version. And what do you
know, About Chrome says "Nearly up-to-date! Relaunch Google Chrome to
finish updating."

After I relaunched, both versions are still there.

 

The OP didn't use Chrome much. It's my default browser. So if they
hardly run it, it will never update to the latest version and delete the
older versions. I'm guessing that's what happens.

 

I suppose that's possible. But I'd expect the background process that
periodically downloads new versions to get rid of all the intermediates
that he never updated to, rather than leave all of them around.