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"Other" storage taking up 111GB on my 256GB SSD Macbook Pro

I am trying to clear space, and it is difficult because I do not know what to clear. I cannot find anywhere that tells me what files "other" is referring to, and cannot find any files that big on my computer. Any suggestions on how to locate the files responsible for taking up so much space so I can delete them?

MacBook Pro 13", macOS 10.15

Posted on Feb 14, 2020 1:56 AM

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Posted on Feb 14, 2020 3:32 AM

Please read this article. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206996

3 replies

Feb 14, 2020 3:53 AM in response to eatapita23

"Other" just means files that aren't tagged as "System", "Music", etc. That in itself would cause a bit of confusion because "What is it?" But a bug in Spotlight makes the issue worse. Files are designated as "System", "Music", etc and anything that doesn't fit is "Other". Okay. But over time the Spotlight index tends to lose tags so files that were once designated as a specific type become "Other" as well. So ignore "Other". It isn't helpful.


dominic23's link takes you to an Apple article with good ideas. Or, if you have lots of music and/or video files you could move a large portion of them to an external drive.

Feb 15, 2020 12:57 AM in response to dwb

Alright, that makes some sense as to why "other" is taking so much space. However, I have nowhere near that many music and/or video files. I do transfer all the ones that I don't use onto a hard drive, and the ones currently on my computer only add up to about 10GB. The only thing I can think of is two games that I have, which are Fortnite and Hearthstone. I guess it's possible they may contain many files which take up space. It's just hard for me to imagine them taking up 100GB. I guess I can't do anything about it then, thanks for your help anyway, I hope apple can fix this issue :/

"Other" storage taking up 111GB on my 256GB SSD Macbook Pro

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