I have an early 2015 MacBook Air . About this Mac Storage shows Other Volumes in Container as 47.06 GB against Mackintosh HD, and 52.24GB again in Other Volumes in Container against MacBook HD Data. Could someone advise the best way to reduce the 'Other Volumes' disk space, please?
To help prevent unwanted overwriting of system files, macOS Catalina separates your main disk into Macintosh HD and Macintosh HD - Data. From each volume's point of view, so to speak, the other is included under "other volumes" when viewed in Disk Utility. I've not seen it shown that way in About This Mac > Storage, but I can only guess you're describing the same thing. So, the "other" usage shown against Macintosh HD is your documents, pictures etc. and the "other" usage against Macintosh HD - Data is the operating system and applications. No additional space is being used, it's just organised differently behind the scenes as of macOS Catalina. In Finder, it all appears together as Macintosh HD. You can free up space in a number of ways, including of course by removing data or apps you no longer need.
Thanks fo coming back to me. I get what you say, but the space used up in Other Volumes in Container is massive in relation to the overall storage available - see attached screenshot (the hashed area is the space in question). I have stumbled across this advice which may be relevant. I will experiment and get back to this thread.
Massive Other Volumes in MacBook Air
