Hidden Cache Hogs: Why Your Disk Space Is Vanishing
2025-02-08
Many Unix programs cache data in hidden `.cache` and `.local` directories, making it difficult for users to find and clear these large cache files that consume significant disk space. The author witnessed firsthand how graduate students in a shared fileserver environment were baffled by these hidden caches, with hundreds of GBs of disk space being unknowingly consumed. The article calls for developers to store caches in visible directories and suggests that disk space usage tools should explicitly show the contents of these hidden directories to aid in user disk space management.