Iām running the mac client with virtual files used, but itās currently storing around 100GB of previously synced files locally. There doesnāt seem to be any way to clear the local storage in the UI. Is there any way to manually clear everything to free up local storage?
Thereās 40gb in /Users/username/Library/Containers/com.nextcloud.desktopclient.FileProviderExt/Data and more in other Nextcloud related directories which has been sitting around for a month now.
Hi, @GreenFox !
In regard to the data synchronized with your Nextcloud server through the file provider, macOS itself is in charge of freeing up space automatically, when actually needed.
There is the possibility to prevent that and also forcefully āevictā local downloads while not actually deleting an item. Please see our user manual here for further information:
Now, the path you have posted indicates an issue with app support data and not the actual content to synchronize. 40 GB in that path is unexpected and beyond normal operation. I can rule out certain ideas already due to the location. Is it possible that you have the problem tracked here?
Looks to be exactly the same issue Iām having. Same __fpfsdocID folder name taking up all the space. Is there a way I can manually clean it up?
When the desktop client is not running and any transfers were finished, you should be abled to delete it in Finder the way you delete other items.
We were not abled to reproduce the problem yet. It is just a guess but it might be caused by crashes or failed uploads.
When you open macOSā Console.app and look into the crash reports section in the sidebar, are there any reports titled āFileProviderExtā listed?
What kind of server are you connected to? Self-hosted? Local network only? HTTP without āSā? Any VPN in the network connection? 
Not seeing anything in the Console app, though I think this happened several months ago so the logs could be gone. Iām using a self hosted server with https and it should have been connected over the local network. I had copied around 200gb to the nextcloud directory on my mac.
When you now remove those files, they do not appear again?
We will add a cleanup routine in a future release but I would like to determine the actual root cause nonetheless.
That folder does not seem to have filled up again after deleting. Iām still left with a large amount of files in /Users/username/Library/CloudStorage/Nextcloud-username@domain (25-5-2026 12/20)/. I assume this is the file cache managed by MacOS? Though Iām not sure why one has a date in the file path and one does not.
Folders in ~/Library/CloudStorage which have a date suffix usually are backups of already removed file provider domains which were not fully synchronized with the server. It is not managed, neither by macOS nor by our client. Just a traditional folder with content. It is a feature of the file provider framework to prevent data loss on file provider domain removal. It is up to you to inspect and decide whether there still is something in there worth retaining.
It has been some years already but I experienced that myself even with iCloud Drive itself after some macOS updates and never understood why Apple or iCloud suddenly creates these unsynchronized and local folder copy but nowadays I get it. It was a snapshot because something had to be set up from scratch in scope of the macOS update.