Deleting Wifidiagnostics file and others under private/var/temp and /folder on Catalina

Question

Is it safe to delete the Wifidiagnostics file even though its in private/var/tmp? My understanding was that it's better to leave those folders alone in Catalina but I'm not that experienced a user. In the same folder there's also: configd-pattern.plist, configd-state, configd-store.plist. Are those part of that diagnostic test and therefore can/should be deleted as well or are they network configurations? I found conflicting informantions but they were created at the same time of the other one so it seems to me like its related to that log..but it's mostly the log I'd like to delete, its 350mb, its not a lot but it's also not insignificant.

And one more thing, I read that deleting from private/var/folders is supposedly safe compared to the rest, less so /zz (true??)but still. Now I'm not sure that that info is up to date with Catalina, so could it be unsafe as well? I'm asking about /folders because I want to delete some remnants from Zoom Rooms, terrible app I uninstalled(which seems to have left quite the leftovers..on a sidenote, if you have suggestions whether there's files related to it that would be better deleted I'd appreciate it, but it's a bit OP tbh)

It's under folders/y6/lettersandnumbers/c/us.zoom.ZoomPresence/com.apple.metal which contains 3902 and Intel(R) UHD Graphics 630 212kb as a whole..def not worth any risks but it feels like useless deletable clutter.

Thank you everybody:)

Answer 1

It's generally safe to delete items from /tmp (or /private/var/tmp, they're the same thing). Anything that's in the folder is temporary (as the name implies). If you're not doing anything, then the files are more or less left over. Specifically related to the diagnostics file, it's either created by you or another part of the system which requested a network diagnosis. If you didn't create it, it might be set to automatically upload to Apple as a part of their diagnostics & usage.

/private/var/folders stores cache and temporary data for each user (hence the C & T folders within each user). zz is used for the system, and I wouldn't recommend deleting that unless you know exactly what you're doing. Specifically relating to folders/y6/lettersandnumbers/c/us.zoom.ZoomPresence/com.apple.metal, those files are compiled shaders made by macOS for Zoom. They're safe to delete (as long as Zoom isn't open), and they'll just be recreated next time you launch the app.

Answer 2

I would say no at this point, don’t mess with /private and instead open a support case if you catch the system not keeping it under 10 GB for a 250 GB disk. Other than swap files which can be controlled by choosing software that’s efficient or periodic restarts, the rest self clean quite well in my experience.

Unless you’re quite experienced, the risk/reward here has been high risk / low reward.

For instance, partial download and staged installers will be cached here, so if you find them and remove them, the system could have issues patching itself as it’s primed to install at restart after confirming a good download. Other things are placed here that speed up the mac greatly - so you just slow down the system as it has to recreate the files you just trashed.