Disk Utility (Mojave) shows ancient disk images

Whitehill

Registered
I opened Disk Utility for other reasons and noticed, not for the 1st time, that in the left panel, under the real devices, it lists every (seemingly) disk image I have mounted since the beginning of time.

Why are these there? After I eject a DMG, does something linger forever and is it consuming resources?
 
I think you can call that part of Disk Utility similar to a history, which would show disk images that the system has used at one time or another.
I believe those are usually part of a system install (or perhaps a (dot) update, which doesn't really mount, but works from a disk image, for a variety of uses. Not really using any resources, just a "memory of a past install", if that process mounted an image.
If you are booted to your normal system (and not to a recovery system) I think you can safely drag those off of the sidebar, just to clean things up a bit. There is probably an eject icon there, as well, which will also accomplish the same result (removing that item from your Disk Utility list)
 
I call them ghost disk images and it is not just in Mojave. I noticed it in Sierra ( or maybe earlier....my brain is foggy about which OS)
 
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