We’ll run through a quick example of what happens with the Quarantine when you download an application from the internet. You can open the file with Base, or another SQLite editor if you prefer.Īn Example Of What Happens When You Download A File This database file is located at: ~/Library/Preferences/. For my computer, there were saved events from 4 year old emails! The Quarantine Events database contains URLs of downloaded files or mail addresses and subjects for saved attachments, along with a few other bits of information.

However, it is not removed from a database which tracks all of these warning flags. Once you've told the computer the file is safe, the Quarantine flag is removed from the file. For files downloaded from the internet, it also sets a little warning flag to check with the user whether it's OK to open the file. When you double-click on a file, Launch Services is the bit which decides which app to open. Launch Services is a hidden bit of OS X which helps apps open files. This record is not purged when you clear Safari downloads, caches or even reset Safari completely. After all the fuss surrounding the iPhone location log, you may be interested to know that there is a file on Macs running Snow Leopard or higher that keeps a record of files you've downloaded.

Records database for mac