Mar 30, 2017 You can help Apple improve its products and services by letting the company analyze your iCloud data. As much as you may trust Apple, you should know there is a simple way to stop sharing your iCloud analytics data, whether you use an iOS or macOS device. We show you how. Aug 17, 2018 To clean the system logs, you can manually move the log files from different folders to Trash and empty the Trash. Or you can use MacMaster, a clever Mac cleaner that can scan out system logs from different folders on your Mac and allows you to delete the log files in one click. How to Delete System Log Files on macOS/Mac OS X.
- Can I Delete Diagnostic Reports On Mac Library Software
- Can I Delete Diagnostic Reports On Mac Library Application
Your Mac is probably pretty much trouble free, at least most of the time. But occasionally you may experience a system, process, or app crash that stops you in your tracks, and prevents you from continuing to work. These crashes are usually fleeting in nature, and resolved by simply relaunching the app or restarting your Mac.
And while an occasional crash can be frustrating, it’s generally not something to worry too much about. Stuff happens, and you can think of it as one of the many reasons you have a good backup system in place. (You do, don’t you?)
Now, when a crash starts occurring on a more regular basis, or you notice it always happens when x event occurs, it may be time to start delving into the crash and discover what may be causing the problem.
In this Rocket Yard Guide, we’re going to take a look at using the Console app to track down the cause of a system or app crash. With any luck, the Console app will be able to help you resolve the problem that’s causing the crash, or at least give you a good idea of what’s going on.
What is the Console App?
Back in the early years of computing, the console was a terminal that was attached to a computer to monitor the status of the system. If you go back even further, the console may have been a bank of meters, lights, and switches that indicated how well the computer was operating.
(The Console app from macOS High Sierra. The sidebar shows devices reporting to the Console, as well as reports organized by category.)
The Console app included with the Mac is a modern-day version of the old computer console; its primary job is to help you monitor how well your Mac is operating. It can do this because of its ability to display logs, status, and error files your Mac’s operating system and individual apps generate as they’re running.
Log Files
There are a number of different types of files that apps, processes, and the system generate as they work; you can think of them as a journal or diary of what’s going on at any point in time. While there are diagnostic files, crash files, log files, and a few other types, we’re going to refer to them collectively as log files. And for the most part, they can all be read by the Console app.
(OS X Yosemite’s Console app displaying the crash log from when a system preference terminated unexpectedly. Turns out the preference pane is from an old version of an app, and is no longer supported).
The Console app can also look at process messages, and a few other real-time events, but we’re going to concentrate on looking at log files to discover what happened in the past, such as when the system or an app crashed.
Introduction to Console
Even if you haven’t experienced a recent system or app crash, or an unexpected restart, go ahead and launch the Console app, so you can become familiar with the interface.
Launch Console, located at /Applications/Utilities.
Console may look a bit different, depending on the version of the Mac operating system you’re using. Most changes from system to system are cosmetic, such as a few name changes here and there, although there was a significant change going from OS X El Capitan to macOS Sierra. The primary change was the removal or relocation of some troubleshooting tools used when looking at real-time events. Since we’re not developers trying to track down bugs, that shouldn’t have much effect on our use of Console to review log files.
With the Console app open, you’ll see a multi-pane interface, with a sidebar used to select either real-time messages or log files for display, a toolbar across the top, and in new versions of Console, a search bar and tab bar just below the toolbar.
Accessing Log Files
Log files you may be interested in reviewing for information about what caused a crash are found in the Console sidebar under the heading:
- User Reports (User Diagnostic Reports in earlier versions of Console): Crash reports for user processes and applications.
- System Reports (System Diagnostic Reports in earlier versions of Console): Analytics, diagnostics, and crash reports for system processes.
- System log: A log of current system events and messages.
- ~/Library/Logs: Application logs for the current logged in user.
- /Library/Logs: Application and process event logs for all users.
- /var/logs: Log files for maintenance scripts used by the system.
To access a log file, select the category in the sidebar you’re interested in. If the category has a chevron next to its name, expand the chevron by clicking or tapping on it.
A list of log files will be displayed, either within the sidebar or in the main viewing pane, depending on the Console version you’re using.
(The /var/log category contains some interesting logs, including the results of all the automatic maintenance scripts that are run in the background by your Mac.)
Select one of the listed files to view its content.
The log file names usually contain the process or app name that generated the file, the date, the name of the Mac, and finally, the file type, such as crash, diag, or analytics.
For the most part, the crash logs will be the ones you’ll be interested in for troubleshooting system or app crashes, but the diag ones are also interesting to review, since they may contain information about unusual memory usage or high levels of CPU usage.
Understanding Reports
Crash reports are broken into multiple sections, with the first section containing all the information about what process crashed:
- Process: Lists the name of the process, such as TextEdit.
- Path: The process location.
- Identifier: The unique process name, such as com.apple.textedit.
- Version: The version of the app or process.
- Code Type: The processor type the code is meant to run under.
- Parent Process: If the process that crashed was spawned by another process, it will be listed here.
- Responsible: Usually the app or process name or developer.
- User ID: The user ID in use by the app or process.
The next section tells you when the app or process crashed:
- Date/Time: The date and time when the process or app terminated.
- OS Version: The version of the Mac OS that was running at the time of the crash. An interesting side note: Console still uses OS X as the operating system name, although the version number is correct.
- Report Version: The version number of the crash report style in use.
- Anonymous UUID: This is a long string of numbers and letters that are a unique identifier of the process.
- Time Awake Since Boot: How long the system has been running, displayed as the number of seconds.
- System Integrity Protection: Shows status of SIP.
Can I Delete Diagnostic Reports On Mac Library Software
And finally, the meat of the problem: what caused the crash.
- Crashed Thread: Which process thread was running when the crash occurred.
- Exception Type: This is the actual event that caused the crash.
- Exception Codes: Additional details about what caused the exception type.
- Exception Note: Message, if any, generated by the crash.
- Termination Signal: The name of the signal type used to tell the process to quit.
- Termination Reason: The category for why the termination signal was initiated.
- Termination Process: Which process initiated the termination.
The next long section of the report lists what led to the crash in reverse chronological order, starting with the thread listed as the cause. This may seem like a goldmine for discovering what caused your crash, and it is. This section and the next, which is called a backtrace, can be very helpful for the developer to troubleshoot a system or app crash. However, it’s usually not very helpful for most users.
(The anatomy of a crash report as displayed in the Console app.)
What Can I Do With This Information?
One of the best things you can do is contact the developer, open a support ticket, and send in this crash report. Developers need this type of information to troubleshoot and refine their apps or code.
Depending on the version of Console you’re using, you can either:
Use the Save As command under the File menu to save a copy of the crash report, which you can then send to the developer. Or, if you’re using a later version of Console, you can use the Share button in the toolbar to attach the crash report to an email.
You can also right-click on the crash report name and select Reveal in Finder from the popup menu. You can then use the Finder to make a copy to send along to the developer.
(An app crash will display a message indicating a crash occurred. You can select the Report button to display the crash report without having to wade through the Console app to find it.)
If you’re trying to resolve the crash on your own, pay attention to the exact time the crash occurred, then check the diagnostic logs and analytics logs for unusual events that may have occurred at or near the same time. You’re looking for excessive memory or CPU usage, as an example. You may find, for example, that WebKit, a core component of Safari, was using a great deal of RAM when the crash occurred, something you may be able to correct by adding more RAM. Or, perhaps CPU usage was so high that on a hot summer day, your Mac couldn’t cope with the high temperatures.
Another thing to look at is the app version that was crashing. Many times an app crash can be caused by an out-of-date version. Check with the app developer to see what the current version is, and which version, if any, is recommended to run on your version of the Mac OS.
For more information about using the Console app, you can find details on advanced usage at Apple’s support site for Console Help.
With the upgrade to Photos, many Mac users have been left with a duplicate iPhoto library on their Macs. Here’s how to delete iPhoto library and clear out some clutter.
iPhoto used to be the standard photo editor and photo management system on Macs, at least for the average computer user. Like it or not, however, that all changed when Apple first introduced the software, nearly a year ago. If your Mac came from Apple with Photos already installed, you don’t need to worry about old iPhoto libraries.
A Mac that was upgraded to a new version of OS X that added the Photos app, however, can end up with what look like duplicates of their photo libraries. The first time you start up Photos after upgrading, your Mac will copy over your photo library into the new software (if you explicitly set up more than one old iPhoto library, you’ll have to copy them over yourself). It doesn’t go back and delete the old one, though.
Here’s where things get a little bit confusing: you don’t actually have two copies of your photos. Thanks to the way OS X (the software that powers your Mac, like Windows powers a PC) works, your pictures aren’t actually stored in those libraries. Instead, they’re stored somewhere else on your hard drive, and each library has what Apple calls a “hard link” to the pictures. As a result, each library can access the photos, but store separate information about them. You can delete either library safely; only if you were to delete both libraries would you lose access to your pictures.
While having a second copy of your photo library doesn’t take up that much extra space on your computer, it can still be confusing – first of all, each library reports that it’s a certain size, which can make it difficult to figure out how much room is left on your Mac. Additionally, if you need to back things up, it can be hard to figure out where your files are.
Still with us? Let’s recap:
- if you upgrade your Mac from iPhoto to Photos, you’ll get a second photo library
- if you had multiple iPhoto libraries (you would know if you did), you’ll need to copy them into Photos manually
- the libraries each link to a single copy of your photos, rather than storing each photo twice
- it can appear that your libraries are taking up more space than they are, thanks to the way hard links work
- you can safely delete either photo library – only if you delete both of them will you lose access to your photos
How to delete iPhoto library on your Mac
Now that you understand why you might want to delete an old iPhoto library, and why you don’t necessarily have to, let’s talk about how to actually do it.
Before you do anything like this on your Mac – that is, delete something potentially important – you should back up your software with something like Time Machine.
Read: How to Backup Your Mac with Time Machine
That way, if you accidentally delete something important, or something else goes wrong, you can always roll things back to how they were when you started. This is really easy, and there’s nothing to be concerned about; it’s just good practice to back things up (and keep them backed up) before you muck about in your computer.
Can I Delete Diagnostic Reports On Mac Library Application
First, you’ll need to open a Finder window: you can do this by clicking on the Finder icon (it looks like a square face) on the dock, or by clicking on your Mac’s desktop background and hitting ⌘+N (Command + N) on your keyboard.
Next, look at the left-hand column in the new window. You’ll see a list of locations around your Mac; find the one that says Pictures and click on it. You’ll be taken to that directory, which contains libraries for Apple’s image-related apps (Photos, iPhoto, Photo Booth, etc).
In the list of files on the right, scroll down and look for your iPhoto library – it’ll be a little iPhoto icon, and the name will read, unsurprisingly, iPhoto Library. Don’t worry about accidentally deleting your Photo Booth or Photos libraries; you’ll be able to see which one is which.
To actually delete the library, you can do one of three things:
- Click on the iPhoto Library listing, and without letting go of your mouse or trackpad button, drag it until it’s over top the Trash icon on your dock. Once you’re on top of the Trash, let go.
- You can select (click on) the iPhoto Library, then right-click on your mouse or Trackpad (Apple will call this Secondary Click in your Mouse or Trackpad settings). A new menu will pop up; find the entry that says Move to Trash and click on it.
- Finally, you can also delete your iPhoto Library by clicking on it and hitting ⌘+Delete (Command + Delete) on your keyboard.
Read: How to uninstall apps on Mac OS X
Now that you’ve gotten rid of your iPhoto library, it makes sense to completely uninstall iPhoto – that way you won’t accidentally create a new iPhoto Library and have to repeat all these steps. It’s as simple as opening up your Applications folder, and deleting iPhoto (using one of the three steps we just discussed). For a more in-depth look at how to uninstall apps on your Mac, be sure to check out our guide above!
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