Not enough free space on your disk to install macOS Catalina

Agree that we are all responsible for our own devices. One thing I admired about Apple is that it offered seamless and reliable update installation, and didn't leave me in a perfectly sealed loop of inaccessibility to my own equipment when installation was not possible. A full day's work-time lost to first finding out how to get out the loop (thank you again to my discussion thread guru), and then to actually extricating myself from it is not conducive to fond sentiments towards the provider. Just saying. If I cost my customers to that level, I would have a stampede. Go forth and prosper:)

I cannot install Catalina on my MacBook Pro. When trying to quit the installer, I have not choices on the Startup Disk and I got stuck in a loop of automatically trying to install the new OS and Not free Space. I need to know how to solve it! Help me please!!!

This is an Apple site, and I would expect Apple to be monitoring the content: let's face it we are unpaid user acceptance testers for Apple; we pay a considerable amount of money for Apple products, and should expect help where help is needed.

I am currently restoring my hard disk from TimeMachine, a good backup, but I shouldn't need to go through this pain.... and another 5 hours to go!

I’m so angry. Shame you Apple. I spend some six hours with this **** problem. I can not understand that you made that kind of piece of crap. Very first time I ponder to sell my macintosh and byu some other os.

I wasted an evening and a morning restoring my MacBook Pro.

Apple should not be shipping stuff that can cause this to happen which is by we pay a premium price for Apple products.

The big problem Apple just don’t seem to care and inform any more: all show and no knickers.

Thank you sooooooo much! Step 2 saved my life!

I wish I saw this post before I spent 40 minutes with the Apple Support on the phone and was told that I had to get a spare(completely clean) external hard drive to install a new operating system and there would be 50/50 chance that I could/could not save my data.

Such a shame! to allow issues like this happen to users! I just told my friend last week that my MacBook never caused problem! :( I was shaking when the “not enough space” message kept popping up and the mac could not be restarted.

A million thanks! You saved my day!

All the best

I had the exact same issue. I cleared out my storage. I had over 70GB of memory open. It said not enough memory. I was told the same thing-it used my base system. I am not sure why or what this means, but the installation totally failed. Then we tried to install

Mojave again. It failed and it used 1/2 the memory in this base system. After many hours and also trying to use an external drive, for some reason the mojave install progressed and it showed the full amount of memory again. However, when it reinstalled it wiped everything out. I had manually saved my files to an external drive. With Command A and copy I put them back. They twice disappeared and left nothing but the folders! They did assist and had me change something in the terminal so that the rights were restored to read the files. This is my work computer. I am going into the apple store to have them assist with the installation, but I am concerned the same thing will happen again. I am also first going to have two external

drives with the time capsule first. Any suggestions before I go to the Genius Bar in a few days? Did anyone figure out for some of us why it used the base system memory?

Well, thanks for everyone's best efforts. I have followed them all, but now, even with over 45Gb of free space, and several attempts it will still not install Catalina ... what's worse is that it won't even tell me why not! It just takes three hours of my life to go back to mojave and leave me with having the remove the purgeable bits again! Not happy, Apple. Fortunately, I have the brilliant guys at i Love Computers nearby, who are great and to be recommended. Unfortunately, that will cost me between $120 and 180 and mean I lose use of my laptop for 1-3 working days. They are great, I will go there, but Apple, if you are reading this ... and I really hope you are ... this is such a fall from grace for you. Mr Jobs would be turning ... Thanks again everyone for your help! Dericka

I’m having the same issue. I am trying to find a backup. It says, “Searching for Time Machine backups...” How long does it usually take to find backups? My MacBook Air ya been at this screen for twenty minutes.

I’m trying to restore from recovery (MacBook Pro), selected Time Machine, selected back-up time, and then disk “Macintosh HD”. Up popped “”The disk ‘Macintosh HD’ will be erased. Are you sure you want to continue.” Says I’ll all info currently on disk, etc. Do I push “Erase Disk” and then it’ll restore from Time Machine? Help! Thanks!

Please I also need some help, I tried with the Time machine backup but it is searching for hours and doesn’t find anything like the screenshots over my post.

Does anyone knows how long that should take to find a backup?

I have no MacBook since 3 days now and in Vietnam is no Apple Store like casually in US..

I‘d be very thankful for help from the community.

Thank you for the quick answer to help for my problem.

I tried to solve it by doing the exact thing on the external website. However, no snapshots are found (disk2s5 with 223 GB used).

It feels like everybody had snapshots except me? What I’ve done wrong? I really need the computer to work again, there so much data on it.

thanks if anybody has some advices

That is truly a nightmare.

I‘m for the next 3 months in Asia and don’t know anybody who has a MacBook. But I have an external storage, can I move my data to it somehow?

Hopefully the code writer gets fired.

I.ve got exactly the same problem. Now what.?

Yeah. It surprised me when my friend told me about it. He's pretty much on top of things macOS wise.