Disk Clean and reclaim storage space

[ssppss]

One of my imac is taking up huge amount of space even though the user space is quite low. iMac built-in storage data tells me there is a category called "other" as being huge. This Other is taking 700 GB while the actual user data is is only 100 GB. That seems excessive for OS and other stuff.

I researched the net and find that MacOS stores large amount of cache, uninstalled app file, app support file, language files and other stuff. I tried to delete some manually, but it's too much work. I am quite good with Unix so I can do it if I knew what to clean and where to look. Then, based on recommendation from the internet,I used OnyX which reclaimed some space, but not too much. I researched more and found dozens of programs listed for this task. It is hard to know which one to get. Reviews seem fake or paid. I tried some of the free ones and they removed some paltry amount of space. It seems that CleanMyMac is THE highly recommended. Not sure if these reviews are biased or are paid advertisements. CleanMyMac costs $40 to $80 dollars. It's a steep price. Should I bite the bullet and buy it? Is it going to solve my problem?

By the way: I am disappointed at MacOS. I thought it was a clean and simple OS. Why would it let caches and junk of uninstalled apps lie around and eat space. And if it does do it, then disk clean apps should have been part of the OS itself, not an extra purchase.

 

[harryb2448]

It is clean and simple but does require some housekeeping. One question. Do you use Time Machine whch btakes 'snaps' and stores them. CleanMyMac is NOT recommended here. Try Apple Sydstem Profiler (About this Mac) > Storage > Manage and see what can be cleaned up.

Helps if you share your model and operating system.

 

[MacInWin]

CMM won't do much more than OnyX unless you let it get super aggressive, which is hugely risky. CMM has been known to delete files that turned out to be essential for the system.

Caches, etc., are reinitialized at each power on boot. So just turn off the machine and reboot and the caches will be reset.

Do you perhaps have TM turned on but the backup drive not attached? Or are you running something like Carbon Copy Cloner? Both make snapshots of the system to be used to build the backup history when the destination backup drive is re-attached. Those snapshots can consume significant space.

 

[ferrarr]

This is what Apple is trying to avoid. People that don't know what they are doing, and are deleting files to gain minimal space.

First off, what Mac are you using, please include specific model, size (if applicable) and year? What macOS version are you using, please be as specific as possible?

As for "Other", it is a catch-all for files the OS knows does not meet the other file types like music, images, documents, etc.

 

[ssppss]

Thank you everyone for jumping in and sharing your expertise.

The issue is on the following two Macs:

1. 21.5-inch 2017 Mac. macOS Big Sur, version 11.5.2
   1. No Time Machine
   2. "Other" is 700 GB.
2. 27-inch mid 2010 Mac. macOS High Sierra, version 10.13.6
   1. Has Time Machine. But is indicated often to be full.
   2. "System" is 300 GB. (I don't see any "Other")

 

[MacInWin]

How big are the drives? You can try DaisyDisk to get a better analysis of the space on the drive. It's in the Mac App Store and is free, I think, or has a working trial version that is all you need. It does a good analysis of what is on the drive and shows you what is consuming large quantities of space. Be careful getting rid of "excess" files like fonts and foreign language files. Lots of folks have come to grief because the deleted a file like that and it turned out to be essential later on.

As for the two machines, do you mean that on Machine 1 TM is turned off, or that there is no TM drive attached? On machine 2, is there something that triggers the "indications" of being full consistently?

Just for reference, on my MBP 15" mid-2015 using BS 11.6, this is what I see:


The big red section are backups of my iPhone and iPad. The "other" is just 83 GB.

 

[ssppss]

How big are the drives? You can try DaisyDisk to get a better analysis of the space on the drive. It's in the Mac App Store and is free, I think, or has a working trial version that is all you need. It does a good analysis of what is on the drive and shows you what is consuming large quantities of space. Be careful getting rid of "excess" files like fonts and foreign language files. Lots of folks have come to grief because the deleted a file like that and it turned out to be essential later on.

As for the two machines, do you mean that on Machine 1 TM is turned off, or that there is no TM drive attached? On machine 2, is there something that triggers the "indications" of being full consistently?

Just for reference, on my MBP 15" mid-2015 using BS 11.6, this is what I see:
View attachment 34703

The big red section are backups of my iPhone and iPad. The "other" is just 83 GB.

Both my Macs have 1TB drives.

DaisyDisk is $10 but I can try the free version. How would the visual display of disk space help in cleanup?

Machine 1 has never had any Time Machine setup. Machine 2 sometimes gives the message the TM drive is full and that older saved version will be overwritten. (As an aside, should I get a bigger TM disk?).

Your "Other" of 82 GB doesn't look large in comparison to my machines, though I am still surprised that macOS takes that much space?

 

[MacInWin]

Both my Macs have 1TB drives.

DaisyDisk is $10 but I can try the free version. How would the visual display of disk space help in cleanup?

Machine 1 has never had any Time Machine setup. Machine 2 sometimes gives the message the TM drive is full and that older saved version will be overwritten. (As an aside, should I get a bigger TM disk?).

Your "Other" of 82 GB doesn't look large in comparison to my machines, though I am still surprised that macOS takes that much space?

With Daisy Disk you can drill down to see what's in the big hitters. It's kind of intuitive once the "daisy" is on the screen, you just click on a category and it shows the details of that area.

The TM drive should take care of itself, although eventually there may be a backup too large for TM to handle. Basically it will try to keep an intact link chain for every file in the original backup as long as it can. When it needs space, it will shorten the chain by juggling the links to make more space available. However, it can only do so much before it reaches a point where it simply cannot make enough space available for the new files and maintain integrity, at which time it errors out. Most of us either start over when we get the first warning or get a new drive and put away the "full" one. It depends on how far back the TM backups go and how important those old versions may be. It is entirely your decision and nobody can really make it for you.

Finally, "other" is not all system files. In fact, very little of it is actually system files. Those are just files that do not fit into the other categories that that screen uses. So, other is NOT system, NOT photos, NOT apps, NOT documents, NOT Mail, NOT Music, NOT Music creation and NOT iOS backups. But it's NOT system, either, as that is an identified category. It is just other stuff of all kinds that doesn't fit into any of the other categories. So, your statement, "I am still surprised that macOS takes that much space?" is not appropriate.

Now, when you run Daisy Disk every file type gets parsed out and attributes are read to make it more clear what is taking up the space, so there is no "other" category. Here is a screenshot of the top window of DD for that same drive I showed above:


Not surprisingly, most of the space is in the User area. When I click on the "Users" on the list, Daisy Disk shows the details. In the interest of space, I won't show all of the other displays, but eventually I got drilled down to "Application support," which then let me see that 210.1 GB was consumed by MobileSync, which is where the backups of my iPad and iPhone are stored. You can see the full path in the top line of the image (I blocked out my username).


I didn't show it but the other big hitters in my space are pictures for 109.5GB and documents for 46.3GB.

So, DD can show you what is on the drive and nothing will be "other."

 

[Rod]

The HD of a computer it a lot like a filing cabinet. If you were to put all of the notes, documents, reminders, stickies, photos and drafts for every topic that came across your desk into Alphabetic folders for each topic you would get a host of duplications and a cabinet full of data you will never need.
It takes time and housekeeping to reduce the clutter and a computer hd is no different. You can let it build up then do a cull or take care not to let it build up in the first place. Of course it helps if your secretary is not filing stuff you don't need when you're not looking.
By far the best method I have found is to keep a clone of my HD and perform a "clean instal" every major macOS upgrade or two. Eg Catalina to Big Sur.
That means erasing your HD prior to installation of the new macOS then importing all of your user data (you need) from the clone.
This is akin to emptying your filing cabinet and selectively reviewing and placing it's contents into a new cabinet minus all the "dross".
I have a 512GB SSD in my 2015 MBP. When I upgraded to BS I did this, I had not done this with Catalina. The result was 180GB of extra space. Yes, some of this was apps I no longer needed, movies I had watched and so on. After almost a year of daily use I have kept my total data under 400GB.
I do use peripheral storage devices, I limit the number of snapshots created by my clone to 2 and use an app to schedule Time Machine and prevent frequent snapshots with that.
All up I have 58GB of "other" files.

 

[ferrarr]

Can you post a screen shot from Disk Utility with the drive selected? Be sure to use the View menu option to Show all devices.

If you did a fresh install, you may have accidentally created another partition/container with the new OS, and the old is still on the drive, taking up space.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

The most common cause of this sort of problem is that your OS is detecting a software error (which might be minor), and that error is being written to an error log over and over continuously, causing the log to balloon in size until your hard drive runs out of free space.
You can test to see if this is the problem, and in the process clear out the offending log, by downloading and running:

Maintenance (free)

Titanium Software | Operating System Utilities for Mac - Maintenance

Maintenance is an operating system maintenance and cleaning utility for macOS that you can use to perform miscellaneous computer maintenance tasks: run periodic scripts; rebuild the databases; delete application, font, and system caches; and more.

www.titanium-software.fr

The Eclectic Light Company has an excellent article on using Terminal, Disk Utility, Carbon Copy Cloner, and Daisy Disk to answer the question: Where did all that free space go on my APFS disk?

Where did all that free space go on my APFS disk?

The volume should only be half full, but installers and other software complains there’s insufficient free space. What to do.

eclecticlight.co

Other possibilities:

- Time Machine is creating backups on your main drive itself

Disable Time Machine Local Backups in Mac OS X Lion

Time Machine in Mac OS X Lion initiates a sometimes useful, sometimes not feature: local backups. Called snapshots, this seems to be kicked off when your primary Mac is a laptop and the Time Machin…

osxdaily.com

- Dropbox (if you have it) is automatically syncing files to your computer
(Go to the Dropbox gear wheel which is at the bottom right of the Dropbox drop down menu. In the window that opens, choose Advanced. Next to the title Selective Sync:. click on Change Settings. Uncheck all the folders/files you do NOT want automatically synced to your computer. )

- Your laptop is creating and storing a huge "sleep image"

Set newer portable Macs’ sleep mode

Learn how to control which type of sleep your fall 2005 (or newer) laptop uses.

www.macworld.com

 

[ssppss]

Hello

With Daisy Disk you can drill down to see what's in the big hitters. It's kind of intuitive once the "daisy" is on the screen, you just click on a category and it shows the details of that area.

The TM drive should take care of itself, although eventually there may be a backup too large for TM to handle. Basically it will try to keep an intact link chain for every file in the original backup as long as it can. When it needs space, it will shorten the chain by juggling the links to make more space available. However, it can only do so much before it reaches a point where it simply cannot make enough space available for the new files and maintain integrity, at which time it errors out. Most of us either start over when we get the first warning or get a new drive and put away the "full" one. It depends on how far back the TM backups go and how important those old versions may be. It is entirely your decision and nobody can really make it for you.

Finally, "other" is not all system files. In fact, very little of it is actually system files. Those are just files that do not fit into the other categories that that screen uses. So, other is NOT system, NOT photos, NOT apps, NOT documents, NOT Mail, NOT Music, NOT Music creation and NOT iOS backups. But it's NOT system, either, as that is an identified category. It is just other stuff of all kinds that doesn't fit into any of the other categories. So, your statement, "I am still surprised that macOS takes that much space?" is not appropriate.

Now, when you run Daisy Disk every file type gets parsed out and attributes are read to make it more clear what is taking up the space, so there is no "other" category. Here is a screenshot of the top window of DD for that same drive I showed above:
View attachment 34704

Not surprisingly, most of the space is in the User area. When I click on the "Users" on the list, Daisy Disk shows the details. In the interest of space, I won't show all of the other displays, but eventually I got drilled down to "Application support," which then let me see that 210.1 GB was consumed by MobileSync, which is where the backups of my iPad and iPhone are stored. You can see the full path in the top line of the image (I blocked out my username).
View attachment 34705

I didn't show it but the other big hitters in my space are pictures for 109.5GB and documents for 46.3GB.

So, DD can show you what is on the drive and nothing will be "other."

MacInWin - Thank you so much for the detailed answer. I will install and see how to use it to eliminate wasted space.

What do you think of another disk mapping free app called Disk Inventory? It also gives a visual on the disk space.

 

[MacInWin]

I have not used it, so I can't offer any comments, sorry.

 

[ssppss]

Can you post a screen shot from Disk Utility with the drive selected? Be sure to use the View menu option to Show all devices.

If you did a fresh install, you may have accidentally created another partition/container with the new OS, and the old is still on the drive, taking up space.

I will post the image soon. I did not do a reinstall of the OS.

 

[ssppss]

The HD of a computer it a lot like a filing cabinet. If you were to put all of the notes, documents, reminders, stickies, photos and drafts for every topic that came across your desk into Alphabetic folders for each topic you would get a host of duplications and a cabinet full of data you will never need.
It takes time and housekeeping to reduce the clutter and a computer hd is no different.

Is there any comprehensive list off files and their locations for me to manually delete? That would seem like a good way to clean the iMac instead of using apps like CleanMyMac.

 

[MacInWin]

Basically, don't delete anything that is not in your own directory. That is, in /Users/<<your login>>. Everything else should be pretty much off limits.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

What do you think of another disk mapping free app called Disk Inventory? It also gives a visual on the disk space.

There are a number of FREE utilities that will show you everything that is on your hard drive. Each does so in a different way. Since they are all free, you can try any or all of them out and see which one you like the best.

DiskInventory X (free)
Disk Inventory X

GrandPerspective (free)
GrandPerspective

OmniDiskSweeper (free)

Omni Labs — OmniDiskSweeper, OmniWeb, and OmniPresence - The Omni Group

Creators of Mac, iPad, and iPhone productivity software. Proud to bring you OmniFocus, OmniOutliner, OmniGraffle, and OmniPlan.

www.omnigroup.com

 

[ssppss]

Can you post a screen shot from Disk Utility with the drive selected? Be sure to use the View menu option to Show all devices.

If you did a fresh install, you may have accidentally created another partition/container with the new OS, and the old is still on the drive, taking up space.

Here is the disk utility screenshot:

 

[ssppss]

There are a number of FREE utilities that will show you everything that is on your hard drive. Each does so in a different way. Since they are all free, you can try any or all of them out and see which one you like the best.

DiskInventory X (free)
Disk Inventory X

GrandPerspective (free)
GrandPerspective

OmniDiskSweeper (free)

Omni Labs — OmniDiskSweeper, OmniWeb, and OmniPresence - The Omni Group

Creators of Mac, iPad, and iPhone productivity software. Proud to bring you OmniFocus, OmniOutliner, OmniGraffle, and OmniPlan.

www.omnigroup.com

I am trying Disk Inventory. Do you know how this compares to the paid app Daisy Disk?

 

[ssppss]

Basically, don't delete anything that is not in your own directory. That is, in /Users/<<your login>>. Everything else should be pretty much off limits.

In that case I can't clean anything in the "Other" or "System" category like cache and application support and junk left programs.