"Email bankruptcy is a term used to identify or explain a decision to close an e-mail account, or to delete all messages older than a certain date, due to an overwhelming receipt of garbage messages, compared to legitimate messages…"

Declaring bankruptcy on technology doesn’t have to be just about email. There are many different collections of data on your computer that are as equally disposable as email, and will regenerate just as fast. Knowing where these collections are and having the courage to empty the trash are the only requirements for declaring a bankruptcy on everything from preferences to cache files to keychains. The following are just a few of the collections I routinely purge on my computer, and the steps I take to see them recover safely.

Preferences

Preferences are a silent problem on the Mac. Mac users seem to collect them because all applications have them, and the more applications we run the more preference files we collect. Alone preference files aren’t bad. Most are scarcely a couple of kilobytes and if the application that created them is no longer installed they don’t do much more than take up a couple kilobytes worth of space. (That’s right when you delete an application on a Mac by dragging it to the trash the preference files remain. YOUR IT GUY LIED TO YOU!.) Problems arise when preferences become corrupted, or an application incorrectly reads from the wrong version of a preference file. When this happens the solution is often to delete the offending preference file, but why not take the time to delete all of your unused preferences?

A simple preference weeding procedure consists of navigating your Finder to ~/Library/Preferences displaying the contents in an alphabetical list, and sending the preferences for applications you no longer need straight to the trash with a quick press of the Command + Delete keyboard shortcut.

A proper preference bankruptcy requires sending the entire contents of ~/Library/Preferences, to the trash. Launching your favorite applications and only retrieving the preference files from the trash for apps that require serious preference wrangling. The choice is yours, but nothing brings you closer to the feel of a brand new Mac like bankrupting your preferences.

Keychain Items

The Mac OS Keychain is another collection of data neglected by Mac users. The Keychain is used to store passwords, private keys, certificates and secure notes. Most users never interact with their Keychain directly, and only discover a problem when their favorite services and applications are not authenticating properly. Cleaning out the Keychain Access application is very similar to weeding out one’s preferences. Launch the Keychain Access application from /Applications/Utilities and delete and keychain items you do not recognize.

A proper Keychain bankruptcy requires deleting the entire login keychain, restarting Mac OS X and reentering your keychain credentials as prompted by your applications. It is important to backup your ~/Library/Keychains folder before declaring bankruptcy just incase you forget your credentials and have to peek at your archived passwords.

Browser Data

History, Cookies, and Cache are all collections your browser keeps. Why not declare bankruptcy on your browser and enter the web unburdened and anonymized. In Safari bankrupting all of these settings is as easy as selecting Reset Safari from the Safari menu. Other browsers often require you to hunt for these settings within pages of preferences.

Email Database

If you have IMAP email like I do and store all of your messages in the cloud then there is nothing stopping you from deleting Mail.app’s database and watching all of your messages get retrieved from the server. This kind of bankruptcy may not have a particular benefit unless you are experiencing email database issues. Start by quitting Mail, deleting ~/Library/Mail/Envelope Index, and rebuilding the database the next time Mail starts. A full bankruptcy requires purging everything in the ~/Library/Mail directory except for Metadata, AvailableFeeds, RSS, MessageRules.plist, Signatures, and Mailboxes. (Don’t forget your attachments stored in `~/Library/Mail Downloads.)

Application Support

The files located in the ~/Library/Application Support directory can be tricky because different application store different types of data in these folders. If you are declaring a bankruptcy here it is best to just remove the folders for applications you no longer have installed. If you are feeling bold you can remove them all and replace the ones required for running your favorite apps.

Lightroom Previews

As an Adobe Lightroom user I have my catalog, I have my photos, and I have my previews. My photos and my catalog are irreplaceable, but my preview can always be regenerated. Locate your Lightroom Catalog Previews.lrdata file saved in the same directory as your Lightroom Catalog. Move it to the trash, launch Lightroom and watch your basic previews be rebuilt. To render standard sized and 1:1 previews select all of your photos and then select either Render Standard-Sized Previews or Render 1:1 Previews from the Library, Previews menu.

iPod Software Updates

How many iPods do you have? Do you still have every iPod you ever owned? If you don’t and are looking to free up space on your hard drive declare bankruptcy and delete the Software Updates folders stored inside ~/Library/iTunes. If an iPod or iOS device needs an update it can always be downloaded again from iTunes.

Remaining Library Items

There are still a lot of directories in the ~/Library folder that could require a bankruptcy, but two of the easiest are ~/Library/Caches and ~/Library/Logs. Delete the contents of both these folders and restart your Mac for that just cleaned feeling you can’t buy with a utility without being ripped off.

Dropbox Cache

As a Dropbox user I leave my computers running in the background to sync up my Dropbox folders while I am working from another location. If you restart as often as I do (NEVER) you are bound to build up a pretty serious Dropbox cache. (Mine was well over 2GBs today.) Take care of that cache problem by entering rm -R ~/.dropbox/cache in the Terminal and watching your free space increase. No need to restart, Dropbox will sort itself out, I promise.