There's a bunch of stuff in my pictures temp folder which wasn't there before...

[Phentex]

some have names that start with brackets like {7864532678-467C-00067-378926} and some have names like plugtmp-14. There are 3099 of them! Do I need any of this?

The only things *I* ever put in this directory are pictures.

Thank you.

[ManiacJoe]

1. What is the name of your "pictures temp folder"?

[Phentex]

2. TEMP...

under it is says C:/Users/G2/AppData/Local

At the very top of the window it says Pictures Library: includes 4 locations

I called it a folder but the four locations are: My Pictures, Public Pictures, Logo and Temp

My pictures are my stuff. The public pictures are samples that came with the computer. I never use those. The logo directory has my business logo files. And the temp has a bunch of other stuff.

[ManiacJoe]

3. You are misusing this TEMP directory.

The TEMP directory is a place that programs and the OS are supposed to place temporary files. These files tend to have short life spans. Well behaved programs will delete these files when they are done with them.

As a general rule, you should not be placing any files there. "My Pictures" would be a good place for your pictures.

[Phentex]

4. I haven't put anything there...

that's why I am asking how 3099 files got there. Could Avast be placing them there? Can I delete them?

I have maybe 30 pictures and 12 logo files. I didn't even know this temp directory existed until I went to look for a picture, scrolled down and saw a bunch of files I don't recognize.

[Phentex]

5. I see the confusion in my first post...

I was referring to the whole Pictures directory in my first post. The other four locations are under that. In my post, it sounds like I am putting pictures in the temp but what I meant was I am putting pictures in the directory called My Pictures only.

Sorry. I do not know the terminology.

[ManiacJoe]

6. Where are your "30 pictures and 12 logo files"?

They should not be in the TEMP folder.

If the files in the TEMP folder are very old, yes, you can probably delete them with no harm.

One thing you should definitely do is move your "pictures library" to a more appropriate folder like "my pictures". "appdata/local" is a very bad place for your "pictures library".

[Fantastic Anarchist]

10. You shouldn't be putting anything in AppData unless you know what you're doing.

[gvstn]

7. Temp shouldn't be included in the Pictures library.

Independent of cleaning up that Temp folder you can remove it from showing in your picture library.
So open your Picture Library and at the top left where it says it includes 4 locations, click on the 4 locations link. That opens the window showing the 4 locations. Highlight Temp and hit Remove button. That will make it so Temp is no longer included in the Picture library. No files are deleted by doing this, the files in Temp will just not be included in the Picture library anymore (which is normal).

As someone mentioned the TEMP folder should be cleaned up fairly automatically. I almost never manually clean it. I just took a look at mine and it only has 4 files in it. I don't want to recommend just emptying it yet, but will get back to you since you have so many files in it. You could just type Disk Cleanup in the Start menu and let Windows do preliminary cleaning to see what it does with that folder.

[Phentex]

8. Thanks!

I did both. I still have a lot of space left but the cleanup was a good idea anyway. And now I don't have to see all that stuff in the pictures library!

[gvstn]

9. Good!

I just looked at disk cleanup and it doesn't cleanup anything in that particular temp folder. You might want to see how much space that folder is taking up. I just emptied mine with no ill effects but it was only about 1mb.

If you type %appdata% into the Start/Search box and hit enter it will open an Explorer window. From there you want to click on AppData in the address bar. Then select the Local folder and then right-click the Temp folder and select Properties. If the folder size in only a few mb then you can just leave it alone. If it is much larger you might want to manually delete the files. It is up to you but anything in a Temp folder should be disposable without repercussions. Anything necessary will probably be recreated. In fact during this boot I have seen that folder grow from 18 files to 49 files in the last half an hour. So it appears that just working on your computer creates files there, I'll keep an eye on mine and see how it grows but in general I would say just leave it be since its files are no longer disturbing you in your Picture Library.