Mail data vs cache

[craigstanton]

I'm about to clean my hard drive using Mole. After a --dry-run it promises 70GB of savings which is great, except for "Mail data" which is ~15GB. I used the --whitelist to protect "Apple Mail cache", but the next dry run still says 70GB and includes the mail data number. Are these the same things, and how can I prevent Mole from deleting decades of attachments?

(Yes I Have done a search but could not find a conclusive answer to this)

[tw93]

@craigstanton Thanks for asking, they are two different things. "Apple Mail cache" is ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.mail, and that is what your whitelist entry protects. "Mail data" is ~/Library/Mail, where your messages and their attachments live. It is a review row with the ⊙ mark that only shows the size: Mole never deletes that folder and its ~15GB is not in the 70GB, which is why the total did not change.

One related folder is cleaned. ~/Library/Mail Downloads holds the copies Mail makes when you open an attachment, and Mole removes a copy once it is over 30 days old and nobody has edited it. The attachment itself stays with its message. When any qualify, the dry run shows a "Would clean N mail attachments" line, so you can check that before running the clean.