How to Clear Space Occupied by File Provider Ingest Folder in macOS

If you are using macOS, you might be knowing that just like any other OS, it will also have temporary and cache files which will take up storage in your laptop. Over a period of time, these files might take up a considerable amount of space. You might need to clean up your macOS once in a while. There is no default option to clear cache and temporary files in macOS and you will need to do it manually. If you are facing a weird issue of your space being used up by the Application folder, here is a solution for it. Here is how to clear space occupied by File Provider Ingest Folder in macOS inside the applications folder. This space is occupied if you are using a cloud storage service like Google Drive or Dropbox. Here is how to remove this and reclaim space.

Related Reading: How to Uninstall Apps on a macOS Ventura

What is File Provider Folder? 

Introduced by Apple in macOS 12.1, File Provider provides native support for accessing cloud-based file systems like Google Drive. So in case you are Google Drive on macOS, this folder will be active. If you see that your applications folder is taking up storage, then it could be due to File Provider. 

The actual storage is not occupied by the application, but instead, it is occupied in the Applications folder. This folder is located at Library > Application Support > FileProvider > *random symbols* > wharf > wharf > ingest.

This ingest folder occupies a lot of storage, in my case, it was around 157GB.

This folder was occupying files due to Google Drive installed on my macOS. You can remove this by just opening Google Drive or any other cloud storage you have installed on your macOS. When you open Google Drive, the entire files are deleted automatically by macOS. In case it is not deleted, you can manually clear them. This is how you can clear the File Provider Ingest Folder in macOS.