Xcode 11.1 "There is not enough disk space available to install the product"

In my case, it got solved, but I'm not too sure how.

First, let me state I had 4 different sources of "free space" information:

• Disk utility
• Get info in Finder on the partition
• df -h in command line
• Storage management in "About this Mac"

All would report very different values (df reporting 8 GB free, disk utility reporting 20 GB, and about this mac over 125 GB). Note that at that point, I had just deleted 66 GB of VM files, so I was rather sure I had quite some space free for real. But a lot of it was displayed in disk utility as "purgeable". And Apple says it's purged automatically.

In my quest to purge, I downloaded and ran "Clean my mac X" or something similarly named. I ran it once, it found over 100 GB to clean. I executed the cleaning, and it stopped after 500 MB, as it is a trial version. Then, checking it said I had a lot more free space. I tried installing from AppStore again and it worked.

Post XCode 11 install, in disk utility, I now see 77 GB Free, and "127 GB available (50 GB purgeable)".

I'm not sure "Clean my mac X" has helped. I suspect MacOS needed time to realize there was really enough space now. But then, no certainty, only assumption. While my system runs apparently ok, I don't specifically recommend you try that software, at least not until you are sure you have enough space and you have no other option left.

Installation has cancelled several times now. In last trial, I had 39,5 GB (!) of free space before installation. Installation is split into 2 parts: First one is 2,38GB, that downloads and installs fine. Second part is 7,64GB. That download fines, starts installation and then stops with "Unable to download app" (which is of course wrong because download work fine) and "XCode could not be installed. Please try again later."

Freeing up 40 GB on a 256GB drive was already hard enough. Next try would be: Move all documents to an external stick and then retry installation :-(

SMMDC wrote:

I have 20GB free space. I would hope that should be enough...

FWIW, 20GB is very little free space even for a 128GB drive. A good rule of thumb is to keep 20% GB free. Just to add, the free space has to be on the drive you are installing to. You could have a trillion GB free on an external and it wouldn't matter. The free space is not just for the size of the file but space needed to move files around, etc.

SMMDC wrote:

Thank you, dialabrain for your quick response!

You're welcome

understand what you are saying, but I wonder:

why are you talking about the installation when I'm not even at that step yet.

Because you asked about installing it, not extracting a .xip file.

'm trying to unzip the .xip file on an external drive with 1.73 TB free space so that I can see how big the unzipped file is, so that I can see how much space I need to clear out before I can do this update.

Again, as I tried to explain, the size of the file compressed or expanded is not the issue.

"The free space is not just for the size of the file but space needed to move files around, etc."

But my point is: even with 1.73 TB free space the .xip does not want to unpack. This seems like a bug to me, or a corruption.

Am I wrong? Are .xip files built to install when you unpack?

That I can't answer.

It is unfortunate that the xip(1) command does not offer the ability to peer into the .xip file without expanding it into a directory. The Xcode 11 .xip may actually have the /Applications folder as its target within the .xip file.

You might want to write a free-space monitoring script... Might just be writing into a file date/time and free space, then run it while installing. I suspect your problem is actually not linked to free space. Also there might be a way to get some more meaningful error message, maybe from System Log, as this message is quite useless.

Hi MoaMoi,

previously the "Unable to Download" error was sometimes followed by "Not enough space" (as I 'only' had 15-20 GB of free space). So it's still the same error message. Anyway I've now freed up 65 GB in total so we will see in an hour or so...

For me it allowed the update once I had 24GB of free space. So that maybe what is needed

I imagine that could be the case.

This is not gonna help much, but I'm facing the same issue when trying to install from AppStore, and I have 125 GB free...

The xcode 11.1 does not want to install. it shows the progress for the down load but after 75% it stops and tries again. afther several tries it indicates it cannot down load the file.