When I go to storage in About My Mac it says I have 80.7GBs of free space, this is because I have been deleting some files to make space, however, when I go into System Report > Storage it says my Macintosh HD has only 14.7 GBs free. I've tried Clean My Mac and it says I have the 80 GBs, I restarted my Mac and it still appears the same, I don't know what else to do.
MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.15
The first thing you should do is uninstall CleanMyMac according to the developer's instructions. It is considered to be akin to malware by most users here.
You can check to see if you've removed all of the files by downloading and running Find Any File to search for any files with the application's name and the developer's name in the file name. For example for CleanMyMac software you'd do the following searches:
1 - Name contains cleanmymac
2 - Names contains macpaw
Any files that are found can be dragged from the search results window to the Desktop or Trash bin in the Dock for deletion.
FAF can search areas that Spotlight can't like invisible folders, system folders and packages.
Also don't use the About This Mac Storage graphics to determine free space on your drive. Control (right) - click on the drive's icon and select Get Info from the contextual menu. What you'll find in the Info pane is an accurate depiction capacity, amount used and the amount of free space. The same goes for any folder on the hard drive.
If after deleting a lot of files you don't see the change in the Info pane you should reindex the hard drive for Spotlight: How to rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support
The first thing you should do is uninstall CleanMyMac according to the developer's instructions. It is considered to be akin to malware by most users here.
You can check to see if you've removed all of the files by downloading and running Find Any File to search for any files with the application's name and the developer's name in the file name. For example for CleanMyMac software you'd do the following searches:
1 - Name contains cleanmymac
2 - Names contains macpaw
Any files that are found can be dragged from the search results window to the Desktop or Trash bin in the Dock for deletion.
FAF can search areas that Spotlight can't like invisible folders, system folders and packages.
Also don't use the About This Mac Storage graphics to determine free space on your drive. Control (right) - click on the drive's icon and select Get Info from the contextual menu. What you'll find in the Info pane is an accurate depiction capacity, amount used and the amount of free space. The same goes for any folder on the hard drive.
If after deleting a lot of files you don't see the change in the Info pane you should reindex the hard drive for Spotlight: How to rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support
hey! so i got in contact with the people from apple and they couldn’t really offer me a solution... apparently there was a lot of free storage but it was marked as “purgeable” so it wasn’t really available... they told me that the only solution they could think of was to back up anything i needed individually (not through time machine as the error would get into my back up and persist) and erase my whole disk through disk utility... it was a long process to get everything back but i now have the free storage!
Please remove CleanMyMac. Add-on cleaners can be a common source of issues.
The Get Info displays (unfortunately) tend to be wonky.
GrandPerspective is a common alternative suggestion. So is OmniDiskSweeper, though I’ve not used that app.
SpotLight data is the foundation of various macOS functions, including the search function of course, the App Store detection of the installed apps, and variousmstorage and capacity reports.
when I right-click and go to Get Info on Macintosh HD it says 1 byte...
Can you post a screenshot of that Info pane? Did you rebuilt the Spotlight index?
Also CMM may not be involved in this particular problem but will definitely adversely affect your Mac's performance later on. Just search these forums for CleanMyMac to get the many posts about it.
Hey! Thanks for that however, my problem isn't really CleanMyMac... when I right-click and go to Get Info on Macintosh HD it says 1 byte... The reason I need storage is because I'm trying to update my Mac but it says I only have 14 GBs available and can't update, however in the about my Mac it says I got 80 GBs. I did the reindex Spotlight and its doing it right now but I don't know what that is for... Do you know what I can do? thanks!
Incorrect storage detection on Mac
