File system
The hidden Library folder on a Mac and what lives in it
Finder hides one of them, shows you a fraction of another and relabels the folders inside it. Here is what is actually there.
Guides for Mac Users
Walkthroughs for the file and mailbox problems macOS gives you no answer for. Written by the people who build the tools, not by a content team.
Showing 19–27 of 35 articles · page 3 of 4.
Converters
What is an EMLX file, and how it differs from EML
An EMLX is not a renamed EML. There is a byte count in front and a property list behind, and both matter if you are converting one.
Converters
What is an MBOX file, and which Mac apps use it
MBOX is four formats wearing one extension. Which variant your application wrote decides whether the next one can read it, and the file itself will not tell you.
Converters
What Apple Mail Export Mailbox actually produces
The built in export works, up to a point. It writes a package rather than a plain file, and that alone explains most of the trouble people have moving the result anywhere else.
Storage
Mac caches explained, and which ones are safe to clear
Clear your caches is bad advice without a list. A verdict on each layer, plus the two folders sitting beside them that lose real data when emptied.
Storage
Why deleting files does not free space on a Mac
You emptied the Trash and nothing moved. That is correct accounting rather than a fault, and the cause is almost always sitting in a snapshot list.
Storage
What is System Data on a Mac
It is the only category on the storage bar that nothing measured. Everything else is counted, and System Data is whatever is left over once the counting stops.
Converters
How Mac email clients store your mail on disk
Switching clients is painless for anything the server holds. The question worth asking first is what happens to the mail it does not.
Backup
How to archive old Mac email to an external drive
Exporting a mailbox with subfolders quietly leaves the subfolders behind. That is one of three things worth knowing before you delete the originals.
Reading because something is stuck?
Every tool in the catalogue has a trial that runs on your own file, so you can find out whether it helps before you spend anything.