My daughter has a MacBook Air 13in, early 2015... OSX Yosemite....
it shows that she is using over 80GB of her HD for Applications...which doesn't make sense.
I have done all I know how to do to determine where the "hidden files" are lurking.
Any thing you might offer to help, is appreciated.
Peace.
Good point about the spotlight index. You can check into that.
However, if the applications folder is 120 GB, that means one or more of the items inside it is taking up a lot of space. This should make it fairly straightforward to track down.
Go down the list of items in the Applications folder and see how big each one is - you can do this in list view and look at the size column, but for folders you may have to "Get info" individually.
Most likely it is a 3rd party application that is using all the space, not one that came installed with the OS. Any big videogames, media apps, etc?
This should find the culprit(s) almost certainly.
Theoden
Thank you for your response. I took a look at the storage area on her laptop...found under the Apple icon.
the applications folder is 120 GB....yikes! I am clearing out her cache. went through last night and dumped some old downloads. that freed up 39 GB...something is still lurking in the background.
she has had the laptop since 2015. She seems to capture and store music and photos/short videos. the two of those have only 23 GB used combined.
Once the cache is cleared out I will restart and see if that has made a difference.
Thanks again.
well,
This freed up another 7GB...but it is still very full.
Any other help is appreciated.
Thanks
Hi Mark,
Let me see if I can help track this down.
Where on the computer is it showing this?
How large is the Applications folder on the hard drive? Have you browsed through the apps inside that folder and see if any of them are inordinately large?
How long has she had the computer, and what apps does she use most frequently? It could be that her user data, photos, or other media are being stored inside an app so the computer doesn't recognize it as another kind of data.
Let me know if this helps.
why does my daughters MacBook Air show so many applications
