icloud

I recently learned that account verification is now generally available on Twitter... but when I went to verify my account, I got a notice that I needed to confirm my email address. I went into my account settings, and my account (which has existed since 2008, and has had a confirmed email address entered since the beginning!) showed my email was in working order.

So, knowing that sometimes you just need to give software a little percussive maintenance, I decided to try changing my email address (using another email alias for my normal iCloud account). Well, I got the confirmation email, clicked the link... and found a wonderful 500 error page:

2016 Update: If you use iCloud Photo Library, there's really no need for Photo Stream anymore except for niche use cases. I'd recommend disabling Photo Stream entirely if you use iCloud Photo Library.

iCloud's handy Photo Stream feature is very convenient for getting the photos you've taken to and from all your devices—Mac, iPad, and iPhone. However, if you use an app like DaisyDisk to find large directories on your Mac, you may notice a very large folder inside iLifeAssetManagement (specifically, in Users/[yourname]/Library/Application Support/iLifeAssetManagement/assets/sub).

You can safely remove this folder by doing the following:

1. Open System Preferences and go to the iCloud settings.
2. Uncheck 'Photo Stream' (this will turn off automatic syncing back to your Mac.

Now, you should get (in most cases) a few GB of space back on your computer. Note that you can still access all the Photo Stream photos you've previously imported into Aperture and iPhoto libraries.