140 Gb of "System file" space

Hello GVNN25,

Thanks for asking the Apple Support Communities for help with your Mac storage. I will offer some articles to help.

1. These articles talks about making space on your internal hard drive:

• How to free up storage space on your Mac - Apple Support

• Optimize storage space on your Mac - Apple Support

• Find and delete files on your Mac - Apple Support

2. Another possibility is the space is taken up from iTunes backups that you can delete. Check this help article:

• Locate backups of your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch - Apple Support

3. Once you made space, it's possible that the space is still being utilized by local snapshots. If you are using Time Machine, the system makes local snapshots which preserving your data until you make a backup. You can see if time Machine is enabled by going to System Preferences > Time Machine. If it is enabled, I recommend that you make a Time Machine backup. This is explained here:

• About Time Machine local snapshots - Apple Support

"Your Time Machine backup disk might not always be available, so Time Machine also stores some of its backups on your built-in startup drive and other local drives. These backups are called local snapshots. One snapshot is saved every hour. If you're using macOS High Sierra, another snapshot is saved before installing any macOS update."

• After you make your space, empty your trash, make the backup, then restart the Mac and see if you are able to reclaim your space.

Thanks again and have a great rest of your day.

It is a known issue with the Storage Management displaying incorrect sizes for the various categories. You can try rebuilding the Spotlight index. The only thing that matters is how much actual free space you have on the drive. I just "Get Info" on the volume or on a folder to get the actual free space.

Thanks. I actually found a pile of stuff buried in my ~/Library/Caches folder. Some related to old software but mostly to the software I suspected originally. Once deleted I was back to a healthy 136GB. The way I worked it all out was by checking my 13 inch MBP's system profiler in the file browser tab, seen below which clearly indicates to me what is where and how big it is. This is not visible on OS High Sierra, seen in the lower screen-grab.

Many thanks again.

I have the same problem, however I am using a 2011 iMac, with a 250 GB SSD and 16 GB of ram. I have gone through all the steps above and sill cannot see a decrease in the size of my system folder.

I have attached a screen-grab.