Adding an update to this 9 month old conversation.
In the Terminal app, typing “SUDO periodic daily weekly monthly” would perform the 3 maintenance cleanings that OS X ‘inherited’ from UNIX.
I noticed it no longer works since I’ve updated to macOS 15 Sequoia
That’s because Sequoia has removed periodic. Users are supposed to use launchd instead (cron is also deprecrated).
Those periodic maintenance routines are leftover from macOS’ Unix core which have been slowly reduced in numbers over the years as they just don’t apply to the vast majority if Mac users, probably above 99.9% of them. I’m only surprised that it took so long to be eliminated.
I don’t think they’ve been eliminated. Those kinds of tasks (log rotation, deleting abandoned files from temporary directories, etc.) still need to be done.
But Apple has migrated the scripts over to Launch Services or has integrated them with other system tasks, and no longer uses the legacy Unix mechanisms to drive them
Yes, I meant eliminated from the daily/weekly/monthly periodic scripts, not totally eliminated from the system.