What does the DIM Manifest files do?
Sfariah D
Posts: 26,544
What does the DIM manifest files do? I deleted them all because I did not know what they do?
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Do you mean the ones DIM creates when you install something? They record what and when you installed so DIM can look out for updates, and where installed so DIM can uninstall if necessary. Also if you don't keep the original .zip's then the manifest files tell DIM it doesn't need to download again (until there's an update).
Or did you mean the ones inside the .zip files?
The ones DIM creates.
Why would you delete them before knowing what they were for? You need them to update products. If you want updates then you will have to recover those and if you no longer have them in your bin you will have to uninstall everything and reinstall them to get them back.
Looking in my bin to see if they are still there. I was trying to delete my downloads that were already installed but opened the wrong folder. I wanted to save space on my hdd
Not sure if "uninstall everything" is really needed, since as far as DIM now knows, there is no content at all installed. The newly downloaded-and-installed files will just overwrite the existing ones.
Note that all the manifest files are tiny, so deleting the lot doesn't really save much space anyway.
Isn't there a way to make DIM's "delete downloads after installing" setting retrospective? I thought it could only be done before you start downloading.
You can delete the downloaded packages by selecting the ones you want to delete, right-clicking on one of them and choosing "Delete Packages > All selected".
To recreate the files in the ManifestFiles folder, you need to reinstall the items, then go to Settings > Installation, right-click on the install path, and choose "Fix Installed File Registry" -- otherwise DIM will think the existing files were there before and won't delete them if you uninstall or update a product.