"Other" In Storage

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Level 1

4 points

"Other" In Storage

Hi, I have a MacBook Air from 2019 with 121 GB storage, and had an issue with "Other" storage taking up 90 gb of space. I had no idea what those files consisted of. I already offloaded all my photos, music, videos, even apps. Yet, it still showed that I had 90 GB of other storage. I could not figure out what else I could delete so I reformatted my MacBook. At first, it looked like it did the trick. It showed 11 GB from system. The only application I installed was Firefox. Over the next few days, the "Other" category started growing - from 6 GB to now 9.25 GB. Again, besides Mozilla, I did not download or put anything onto my laptop. I am wondering what is going on with my storage. Is this normal? Any help is appreciate.

MacBook Air

Posted on Sep 7, 2020 7:27 AM

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Answer 1

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neuroanatomist

Level 8

49,005 points

Sep 7, 2020 8:32 AM in response to rclsd7

What is “Other” storage on a Mac, and how can I clean it out?

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Answer 2

rclsd7 Author

Level 1

4 points

Sep 7, 2020 7:36 AM in response to rclsd7

As a point of reference, below are screenshots of my storage on September 6 at 5 pm, and another from September 7 at 10 pm. I've barely used the laptop during this time (I uninstalled Firefox), yet "Other" storage increased from 7.62 GB to 9.25 GB. I have no idea what is going on. Please help!

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Answer 3

rclsd7 Author

Level 1

4 points

Sep 7, 2020 10:34 PM in response to neuroanatomist

Thanks for the information, but I literally have nothing on my laptop except for the operating system. Please see the screenshot below. Now "Other" storage takes up more space than the operating system.

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Answer 4

Sep 8, 2020 7:13 AM in response to rclsd7

Except that you don’t have ‘literally nothing’ in the computer, something is taking up space that macOS considers Other. For example, if you set up an email account in Mail, all the email on the server will be downloaded as a local copy and that’s ‘other’. If logging is turned on in Mail, even more space will be used.

So, you can either choose to figure out what’s taking up that space (with one of the tools in the Tip or something similar, or by digging around in your Library folders), or you can ignore it.

On my main personal Mac (16” MBP) Other is 30 GB, and on my work Mac (15” MBP), it’s 110 GB. On both, I know what is taking up the space and how to reduce it if needed (it’s not needed now, I have plenty of free space on both machines).

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"Other" In Storage

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