Not enough free space on your disk to install macOS Catalina

It says that macOS could not be installed on my computer - I just want to use it now

How long did it take to find your 5 time machine backups? Mine seems to be stuck on “Searching for Time Machine backups...” thank you

Same problem and I totally agree with many of the earlier posts that this is absolutely ridiculous.

I couldn't be sure I had backups of my data so getting the data off the drive is paramount for my situation.

Anyway, two possible solutions for you guys to try:

1) Connect to another computer and start the effected computer in Target mode (so the problem computer shows up just as a hard drive). Then transfer any pertinent data off the problem drive.

*this didn't work for my situation as my problem 2012 MBP has Thunderbolt 2 and my 2017 iMac is thunderbolt 3. Two frustrating trips to the store and back and...

2) Connect an external HD or thumb drive (I had an old 500GB HDD laying around). Restart in recovery mode. Install Mac OS Mojave on this drive. Once it's done it will show the full (ish) internal drive. Transfer data off the problem drive.

Then install Mac OS Mojave on the internal drive via a recent time machine backup as mentioned in earlier posts. This way the TM backup could be a little old and I don't care. Data is safe, MBP is running a stable OS again.

I'll be staying away from Catalina for a long while. Very not happy about this problem.

Grateful you guys took the time to post.

I suggest to open Disk Utility to inspect your disk:

1. Click on one of the icons in the top-right corner of the screen to make the menu bar visible.
2. Select Disk Utility from the menu bar.
3. Select your Disk to see its details.

In my case, I also ran "First Aid" and in the progress dialog, I clicked on the disclosure triangle to see more information. That revealed that there are 3 Time Machine snapshots on my disk. If that is the same for you, I have a solution in a new blog post:

https://tredje.se/dev/trouble/post/apfs-deleting-timemachine-snapshots-without-tmutil

I had the same problem. Stuck, stuck, stuck. Mine issue was solved as follows:

1. I entered recovery mode while restarting
2. I chose “restore from time machine” (thank you, Neotaruntius, I also didn’t know I had a backup on my mac)

Did not need to reinstall Mojave, I just restored it. And back to normal again with transfering files on external disk to make enough space for Catalina .

Catalina installed:)

If you are at ease with the Terminal, this ressource is very helpful to help make more available disk space without having to boot using an external device :

https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/c0x4k0/solution_for_catalina_1015_users_that_cannot_boot/

Thank you so much, you saved me! I was frantic and couldn’t get anything to work and now everything is working great. I was on the verge of reformatting my whole computer and losing everything and your answer was a godsend. Thank you so very much!

Thanks for all the tips. Successfully restored Mojave as suggested. Am still waiting for Apple to apologise and to make a fix which enables available disk space to be estimated and the option to delete files prior to attempting the very time consuming update to Catalina.

Apple is not going to apologize for this as it is working as designed. And, if you want Apple to consider coding the OS to estimate available space - which you can and should do easily yourself - then use the feedback process. Everyone needs to be checking that before attempting to do any upgrade. The installer is over 8 GB and needs about 20 GB to expand during installation. You are responsible for your device and the software on it.

www.apple.com/feedback

hi, follow this

Try restoring from Time Machine Backups (you might actually have one) - you will also certainly have a snap shot Time Machine Backup, probably one from the previous 12 hrs, this is enough to breath life back in to your system

This issue is complete crap. We pay good money for our machines to work and Apple should not be releasing software upgrades with such major bugs. I'm really really ****** and have not got the time to be doing their systems development checking for them. Crap.

Sorry, this is one of the most arrogant answers I’ve read here.

I had 50 GB of free space on my SSD, and still Catalina failed to install. This is just not acceptable. Luckily, I’m a tech pro myself and did not have a problem to get Mojave back from my Time Machine backup. But what about all the others?

My rough guess is that the very backup macOS creates locally before installing Catalina is part of the problem. It might happen that it’s just too big to let room for the actual install. Which would happen if you had a lot of large file changes recently.

Thanks Bergie for your suggestion, I made it to Apple Store today. The staff was able to access my hard drive on MacBook Air using local network, to allow me to delete files to free up some space. You will need at least 40-50GB of free space to install Catalina successfully, which I did.

Am happy that I didn't have to backup my whole MacBook Air data to an external hard drive to restore my Mac to factory settings and reinstall my backup back on my Mac to free up space! Saved a lot of hassle! Got it done in Apple Store in 1.5 hrs.

Info for those who don't have a Time Machine at home or an empty external hard drive to back up your Mac data, suggest you make an appointment at your local Apple store for help.

Just had this same problem, even being very "responsible" for my computer, since I had no idea how much free space it needed to update. Why should I?

Thanks to the good soul that posted the time machine solution

[Edited by Moderator]

Follow step two...

1. Try restoring from Time Machine Backups (you might actually have one) - I cannot emphasize how strongly I believed I didn't have one of these backups, but unbeknownst to me, it did exist on my drive. Even if you're convinced you don't have one, it doesn't hurt to give this a shot. Reboot and go into recovery mode again (press cmd + r during reboot). This time when the options pull up, choose "Restore from Time Machine Backup". Now, as I mentioned before, I thought I hadn't got this turned on, but I guess it was turned on by default by the OS. Your macbook will prompt you to pick a disk where the time machines are stored, and I picked "Macintosh HD". When I clicked this option, I saw about 5 backups populate from today itself. I picked one of them that felt fairly far away from the moment I had began installing this OS. For example, if I started my installation at 4pm, I decided to pick up the recovery from 2pm (even though there was a backup available from 4 pm).