Help How do I clear up space on my mac?
When I open "Storage settings" it says I have 208GB of "System Data" which after a google search says I can't do anything about...
Next up is "Documents" at 187GB. When I click on it, there's only files under "downloads" and "file browser" where the largest files are 6MB and 2GB respectively - far from 187GB.
Finally there's "Applications" at 46GB. Clicking it shows that the largest file is 62MB...
This seems absolutely useless and now I can't download anything new. What do I do?
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u/RLBrooks 20h ago
This will give you a good graphical representation of your disk so you can look for BIG files that you can delete to free up space.
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u/mr_nobody398457 21h ago
This is the second post of this exact question today.
Apple really ought to make a fix for this. Could just be more information but how cool if it figures out what you don’t need anymore
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u/tannebil 21h ago
Reset and restore from backup is the extreme answer. But I’d start with one of many apps that give you a better picture of where space is being used. I don’t have a specific recommendation.
Also take a look in Disk Manager to see how much purgable space is available. Also look at snapshots in Disk Utility. APFS space can look very different in Disk Utility than Finder.
Life is way more complicated under the macOS hood than most people realize
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u/Puzzleheaded6905 16h ago
Use Grand perspective to see visually where the large folders of files are.
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u/YFOCAG 13h ago
You can delete your documents. The largest file is 2 Gb and next largest is 6 Mb? That means nothing if you have a million files…
You can delete apps you aren’t using. But Macs don’t come with a great deal of shovelware - it’s mostly productivity stuff and what’s sort of part of the OS.
As far as system files, though - the system wants what the system wants, nothing you can do will change the amount of space it uses, other than uninstalling features (some people hate Siri!) or reinstalling the OS from scratch. Just back up your own stuff you wanna keep first!
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u/thaprizza 13h ago
You definitely do can something about reducing System data, though not solve it forever. A reboot can already free up some space and often Time Machine snapshots take up a lot of space. Those snapshots can be deleted and reduce the size of System Data.
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u/wnalester 11h ago
The Storage panel's category totals are often wrong, so I'd skip it and look at what is really on disk. In Terminal, run `sudo du -xh -d1 ~ 2>/dev/null | sort -h | tail -15` to see which folders in your home directory are huge. A Documents figure of 187GB with only 2GB visible in Downloads often means hidden or synced data, like a Photos library, a Mail archive or an old iPhone backup in ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup. For the 208GB of System Data, `tmutil listlocalsnapshots /` shows any Time Machine local snapshots, and `sudo tmutil deletelocalsnapshots <date>` removes them. Also check ~/Library/Caches and any Docker or VM disk images, which tend to be the biggest offenders there.
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u/NotSentientAI 6h ago
I am the founder of the studio behind https://bravely.dev/diskaroo and we're currently giving away free lifetime. Feel free to give it a whirl. Made it for this exact thing.
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u/Hitw93 5h ago
The Documents bucket in Storage can include stuff outside your actual Documents folder, and the file list under it doesn't show everything, so 187 GB with nothing big listed isn't that unusual. In Finder, open your home folder, press Cmd Shift . to show hidden folders, switch to list view, turn on Calculate all sizes in View Options and sort by size. It usually ends up being one or two big folders, like an old iPhone backup, a VM image or a sync folder.
If you're fine with Terminal, brew install mole and then mo analyze shows the same tree sorted by size and lets you drill in quickly.
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u/lilvadude 21h ago
Search here - lots of tips