My Macintosh HD disk is full. I’m unable to open or delete any applications on my MacBook Air. My trash bin is empty, but everytime I go to delete an application i get a pop up that says, “the operation can’t be completed because the disk is full.” How am I supposed to delete items to free my disk storage if I’m unable to delete anything?
MacBook Air
I’m not sure what is wrong with my Mac, I’ve tried all of your suggestions. Thank you for sharing unfortunately nothing has worked so far. When I clicked empty caches not enough/no storage was cleared. When I went to downloads I still get the “the operation can’t be completed because the disk is full.” pop up when going to delete an item. When going to the Mac storage tab I receive a pop up that says, “the operation couldn’t be completed. (OSStatus error -34.)” everytime I go to delete something. If you have anymore suggestions please reply as they are greatly appreciated!
I’m not sure what is wrong with my Mac, I’ve tried all of your suggestions. Thank you for sharing unfortunately nothing has worked so far. When I clicked empty caches not enough/no storage was cleared. When I went to downloads I still get the “the operation can’t be completed because the disk is full.” pop up when going to delete an item. When going to the Mac storage tab I receive a pop up that says, “the operation couldn’t be completed. (OSStatus error -34.)” everytime I go to delete something. If you have anymore suggestions please reply as they are greatly appreciated!
Hi_cloud Said:
"Macintosh HD disk full: [...]If you have anymore suggestions please reply as they are greatly appreciated!"
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A Few Methods:
First off, and foremost: The next time you get a laptop, get one with enough storage capacity to suit your needs.
How much space to you have free on iCloud? You have unto 5GB free on that. So upload some stuff to it. Once uploaded, then delete it. Also I would remove any and all unnecessary items from my iTunes Library (i.e. Movies & TV Shows). A movie can take up-you 4 or 5GB of data itself.
If you cannot remove items, use Safe Mode: [Hold Down: shift key upon boot]. In Safe Mode, caches are set aside, and Login Items do not open. So, try removing the Applications in Safe Mode Export them to an External Hard Drive.
You could always reinstall the MacOS Anew. But hold off on that for now, and we'll get to that later, if need be. So, see if anything above works, then report back.
You can go to Safari menu > Preferences > Advanced tab and tick on "Show Develop Menu" which adds a new "Develop" drop-down menu on your top menu bar. Select Develop > Empty Caches to free up some space. Try and use this window to click on anything that you can afford to delete. This includes things you want but can easily get back later off the Internet.
Then see what you can clean up by looking in your downloads folder as pretty much anything there that you don't specifically recognize you can delete.
If you go to > About This Mac, then "Storage" tab on the About This Mac menu then click on Manage. You can use this to see what's taking up all your space.
How much Available space do you have now? Note: I consider it actually dangerous to shut down or restart your Mac with less than 1GB of space Available or less. Not sure how much this has changed with more recent macOS (I think the danger is much less these days actually) but you want to get up to at least a few GB Available at a bare minimum.
Macintosh HD disk full
