I have been using Lightroom on a Mac since 2015 and have not deleted any related files. I need the storage now and am wondering if it is safe to delete old files, particlurly the .zip but also some old ircat.x files?
I currently use LrC on an iMac and never use the old installed software. Are the any old files (pre-2023) software or backup files I shouldn't delete?
Thanks in advance for sharing your knowledge.
lrcat.x files - these are probably the Catalogs belonging to older software versions - not the older software itself. So it is not a matter of uninstalling.
What happens is: say you have a Catalog called "myname.lrcatalog" and you are using LrC version 9. Then you upgrade to LrC version 10. When you start that, it askes what Catalog you want to use and if you say "myname", a brand new copy of that is created called "myname-10.lrcatalog". The "myname" one remains on disk too - hereafter unused and ignored by the newer software which is now using the newer version. When you later upgrade to v11 software, the same thing happens again. Thus various older Catalogs will accumulate that you are no longer using. They are disposable, along with the support folders whose names begin with the same naming. But make sure not to delete the support folders that belong to any current Catalog that you are still actively using.
To clarify, deleting a redundant Catalog (which is a single file with .lrcatalog extension) from disk does not physically affect any photo files which may have been imported into that Catalog. A record of the importation of those photo files, as well as the edits applied, will have been preserved and converted into the newer Catalog copy as part of your migration from prior software version, onto newer software version.
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