Can I remove some or all $HOME/.cache/at-spi2* directories?

I have read a description of [AT-SPI2](https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Accessibility/AT-SPI2/) but I cannot find any information about these hidden sockets. Looking for something else, I discovered many of these, for example: $ cd ~/.cache $ ls -agG at-spi2-1WN552 total 52 drwx------ 2 4096 May 5 08:25 . drwx------ 289 45056 Jun 10 22:10 .. srwxrwxrwx 1 0 May 5 08:25 socket $ ls -agG at-spi2-AQJBD2 total 52 drwx------ 2 4096 Oct 25 2023 . drwx------ 289 45056 Jun 10 22:10 .. srwxrwxrwx 1 0 Oct 25 2023 socket The most recent is from yesterday, the oldest 2 years’ ago. Is it safe to remove some or all of them? My instinct is to set up a cron job to periodically remove all but the most recent. I am using Linux Mint. They certainly do survive reboots. I habitually shut down overnight. It always frustrates me to find unwanted files, even if they are empty. I think programmers should be more careful to clean up. lsof (without sudo) returns nothing. sudo lsof always fails with errors: lsof: WARNING: can't stat() fuse.gvfsd-fuse file system /run/user/1000/gvfs Output information may be incomplete. lsof: WARNING: can't stat() fuse.portal file system /run/user/1000/doc Output information may be incomplete. 1000 is my uid. /run/user/1000/gvfs is an empty directory. /run/user/1000/doc contains several empty directories, with hexadecimal names, they are all dated at the start of the Epoch (1/1/1970)./run/user/1000/ contains several directories with similar (like at-spi2-[HEX]) but different names to those in the title. ps -ef shows 3 processes, all owned by me and all started just after the last reboot: 5223 5115 0 11:33 ? 00:00:00 /usr/libexec/at-spi-bus-launcher --launch-immediately 5234 5223 0 11:33 ? 00:00:23 /usr/bin/dbus-daemon --config-file=/usr/share/defaults/at-spi2/accessibility.conf --nofork --print-address 11 --address=unix:path=/run/user/1000/at-spi/bus_0 5261 1 0 11:33 ? 00:00:02 /usr/libexec/at-spi2-registryd --use-gnome-session I notice the reference to /run/user/1000/at-spi, but nothing to the .cache directories. ---- I was doing something else (I don't remember exactly what at that precise time), and I noticed a new directory has appeared, and sudo lsof is now working. Results of sudo lsof ~/.cache/at-spi2-A4VY72/socket COMMAND PID FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME xdg-deskt 17871 13u unix 0xffff92cebe3ee400 0t0 112169 ~/.cache/at-spi2-A4VY72/socket type=STREAM (LISTEN) xdg-deskt 17871 14u unix 0xffff92cebe3ed800 0t0 117083 ~/.cache/at-spi2-A4VY72/socket type=STREAM (CONNECTED)