I'm getting messages about caching; what should I do?

I can't remember exactly, sorry to say. I guess I'll have to wait until the next time I get one. The gist of it seemed to be that I was close to filling something up, most likely my iCloud subscription. I could pay a little more and they'd set aside more space, but my feeling is that I probably have a lot of ballast in there that could be thrown overboard if I could just get a good look at it.

Thanks,

Rich

Yes, I do have Optimized Storage enabled. And I could, I guess, pay a couple more bucks a month to back up everything. If I understand the system correctly, that would somehow reduce the load on my hard drive. But since most of the stuff is 5,000 photos and 470 videos (showing as 31.3GB in the iCloud pane of System Preferences, but only 924MB in System Information), maybe what I really ought to do is prune that stuff down! Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Hi - Thanks for the Etre suggestion. Here's the report I got with it. No major problems, thank goodness, aside from the battery getting old. The report shows two discs, though: 1s1 with 101.42GB used, and 1s4 with 2.15GB used, which I don't understand. Maybe the 2.15GB is involved with caching.

I guess 16GB free isn't much, so I'll try to delete videos, which probably hog more space than anything else. Is there a way to list the videos in decreasing sizes?

I forgot to include the Etre report!

EtreCheck version: 5.3.2 (5034)

Report generated: 2019-07-27 08:23:06

Download EtreCheck from https://etrecheck.com

Runtime: 2:25

Performance: Good

Sandbox: Enabled

Full drive access: Disabled

Problem: No problem - just checking

Description: 

Ive been getting notifications from Apples iCloud about caching. My fe

eling is that I probably have a lot of ballast in there that could be 

thrown overboard if I could just get a good look at it.

Major Issues: None

Minor Issues:

    These issues do not need immediate attention but they may indicate future problems or opportunities for improvement. 

    Low disk space - This machine is running low on free hard drive space.

    High battery cycle count - Your battery may be losing capacity.

    32-bit Apps - This machine has 32-bits apps will not work after macOS 10.14 “Mojave”.

    Limited drive access - More information may be available with Full Drive Access.

Hardware Information:

    MacBook Air (11-inch, Early 2015)

    MacBook Air Model: MacBookAir7,1

    1 1.6 GHz Intel Core i5 (i5-5250U) CPU: 2-core

    4 GB RAM - Not upgradeable

        BANK 0/DIMM0 - 2 GB DDR3 1600 ok

        BANK 1/DIMM0 - 2 GB DDR3 1600 ok

    Battery: Health = Normal - Cycle count = 916

Video Information:

    Intel HD Graphics 6000 - VRAM: 1536 MB

        Color LCD 1366 x 768

Drives:

    disk0 - APPLE SSD AP0128H 121.33 GB (Solid State - TRIM: Yes)

    Internal PCI-Express 5.0 GT/s x4 NVM Express

        disk0s1 - EFI [EFI] 315 MB

        disk0s2 [APFS Container] 121.02 GB

            disk1 [APFS Virtual drive] 121.02 GB (Shared by 4 volumes)

                disk1s1 - Macintosh HD (APFS) (Shared - 101.42 GB used)

                disk1s2 - Preboot (APFS) [APFS Preboot] (Shared)

                disk1s3 - Recovery (APFS) [Recovery] (Shared)

                disk1s4 - VM (APFS) [APFS VM] (Shared - 2.15 GB used)

Mounted Volumes:

    disk1s1 - Macintosh HD

        121.02 GB (Shared - 101.42 GB used - 16.78 GB free)

        APFS

        Mount point: /

    disk1s4 - VM [APFS VM]

        121.02 GB (Shared - 2.15 GB used - 16.78 GB free)

        APFS

        Mount point: /private/var/vm

I've been thinking about what you wrote, especially the surprise at my having "only" 4GB of RAM. I'm starting to think about trying to sell this one off and buying a refurbished newer Airbook with more RAM, a fresh battery, an upgraded OS, lighter, faster, a bigger screen if I have to. Maybe it's time.

I have an external drive I back up to nightly. I don't know if I'd want to partition it to store, say, my photo library. Then I'd have split my photos into what's on the Airbook and what's on the external drive, and that seems more trouble than it warrants. I can trim my videos, then get a bigger SSD and more RAM , and iCloud probably won't even need to increase its footprint.

Thanks for helping me out.

Rich