Anthropic Cowork feature creates 10GB VM bundle on macOS without warning (github.com)

Article summary

The Anthropic Cowork feature creates a 10GB VM bundle on macOS without warning, causing performance degradation and slow startup times. The issue is due to the VM bundle growing to 10GB and not being cleaned up, leading to high CPU usage and heavy swap activity. Deleting the VM bundle provides a temporary 75% improvement, but the issue persists over time. The problem is observed on macOS with 8GB of system RAM.

Main themes

• Performance issues
• VM bundle creation
• macOS storage management
• Application caching
• System data management

What commenters say

• The use of Apple's Virtualization framework for virtualization is limiting functionality and causing issues with nested VMs.
• A better sandbox environment, such as Apple's Seatbelt, could improve performance and reduce issues.
• Some users disagree that Seatbelt is a better solution, citing its limitations and lack of documentation.
• The issue of applications abusing disk access and not respecting user storage space is a broader problem that affects many users.
• There is a need for more transparency and control over system data and caching, with some users suggesting a 'clear all caches' option.
• The use of third-party tools, such as GrandPerspective or DaisyDisk, can help users manage their storage and identify issues.
• Some users feel that operating systems and applications should ask for permission before writing to files outside of direct user-initiated commands.
• The problem of cache management is not unique to macOS, with similar issues existing on other operating systems.