Adobe folder taking up way too much space

[crashinto24375666l43w]

I just did a computer upgrade for a client and discovered the Creative Cloud Libraries folder in Application Support is taking up over 110 GB of space. A peek inside and I see a couple of folders in the dcx sub-folder are taking up 50+ GB each. They consist of all Illustrator files (.ai), about 7000+ total, and date from now to far back as November 2018. 100+ GB and 7000+ files seems a bit too much. What are these exactly? How can I trim this down to free up space?

Example of their location:

/Users/john/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Creative Cloud Libraries/LIBS/CC3D10A47150946E7F000915_AdobeID/creative_cloud/dcx/7c6d94fe-ccfb-42bc-91f0-49fee5af9f0d/components

[Nancy OShea]

Why don't you ask John what he keeps in his Adobe CC Libraries?

He can free up space himself by logging-in to his Creative Cloud account. I would start with unused Fonts and Adobe Stock images. But he may have saved color swatches, paragraph styles, and other assets there that he shared with collaborators. 

https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/how-to/creative-cloud-libraries.html

[crashinto24375666l43w]

But it's 110+ GB of *.ai files - would fonts, stock images, swatches, etc. take up 110 GB of disk space?

What about re-doing the migration by uninstalling all of Adobe CC apps, deleting the whole Adobe folder in Application Support, but this time only re-installing the Adobe CC apps and NOT re-transferring the Adobe folder? What would he be missing in this scenario? Or would that stuff automatically download again upon launch of an Adobe app?

[Tyler38417608rduc]

that link goes to adobe learn and doesn't say anything about creative cloud libraries

[David__B]

Hi @Tyler38417608rduc

This is the content that appears within the libraries panel within the desktop products and gets synced locally via the Creative Cloud desktop service.

Another option, besides those mentioned here by others, would be to export the library or libraries using up a large amount of space and then delete them afterward. If the library is not used regularly, it could be moved to external storage, copied back over, and imported again when needed. The component folder mentioned by the original poster would show the actual files within a given library if you were trying to remove specific ones using large amount of space.

This article describes the process for importing and exporting libraries as .cclibs files
https://adobe.ly/3SOfwzX

There is a delete option to remove a library in the same flyout menu with import/export.

Hope that helps,
Dave

[Tyler38417608rduc]

Thank you @David__B 

I started reading through Adobe Support for Creative Cloud and I think I understand my situation a little better. When I first used the desktop app I didn't have a good understanding of Files vs Libraries, so almost everything I uploaded into a Library and over the years of using Adobe Stock assests (and several times when licensing directly from the Adobe Stock website, two copies of the asset save automatically to my "default" Library, which has amassed to 1000+ assests, which I did not know is stored on my local storage.

I am wondering if my only option is to redownload the desktop app and manually open each assest to save as a Cloud Document in each app (Photoshop, illustrator, etc.)

Or if I have a 1 TB SSD with a volume that is not case sensitve and download the Creative Cloud Desktop App onto the SSD would it recognize that as the local storage and then those files would be stored there? If I'm doing a brand new install of the app?

[kglad]

the cc desktop app and those cloud files will be on the os drive.  there's no working around that.

you would need to save the images locally, eg to a non-os drive.

[Tyler38417608rduc]

I'm wondering the same thing. The reply, "If the computer is short of disk space, a better solution would be a larger drive," is frustrating because it doesn't address the actual questions.

What are these files—are they caches from CC Libraries? What happens if you delete them? Even after uninstalling all Adobe apps and Creative Cloud, this folder remains and takes up 150 GB of storage.

I did get a larger SSD/external drive. If I run Creative Cloud from there, (by creating an Applications folder and downloading Creative Cloud to that folder,) will it create a new Application Support folder, or continue using ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe on my internal disk? I know you can launch Creative Cloud from an external drive, but you can’t actually install apps like Photoshop to it—they’re forced onto the internal drive.

[Peru Bob]

 How can I trim this down to free up space?

By crashinto24375666l43w

If the computer is short of disk space, a better solution would be a larger drive.