I have a large amount of capacity used on my MacBook Pro in Other and I want to reduce this to free up storage capacity?

What is This Other Category in Storage Display

What is 'Other' and 'Purgeable' in About This Mac?

"Other" contains any of the following types of files. They cannot necessarily be deleted wholesale. Furthermore, “Other” is not an actual, physical file. Rather it’s an arbitrary category to which the files are assigned for display convenience.

• System temporary files
• macOS system folders
• Archives and disk images (.zip, .iso, etc.)
• Personal user data
• Files from the user’s library (Application Support, iCloud files, screensavers, etc.)
• Cache files
• Fonts, plugins, extensions
• Hidden files
• Other files that are not recognized by a Spotlight search

Get Correct Storage Information

Do not use the information from the Storage section of the About This Mac dialog. Ignore the Storage information as it is typically wrong. To find out the correct information for any disk: Select a Desktop disk icon. Press Command-I to open the Get Info window and look at the topmost panel displayed. You will find the disk information displayed for Capacity, Available, and Used. If you have more than one disk/partition then repeat for each one on your Desktop.

The categories found in the Storage section of About This Mac is simply an arbitrary way of displaying files on your drive. There are no such categories actually on the drive.

Please do the following. Select the Desktop icon for your drive, then press Command-I to open the Get Into window. In the topmost panel you will find the drive information listed. It will show the drive's Capacity, Used, and Available space. Please take a snapshot of the window and post it in your reply. This will give me a clear picture of the drive's space usage.

It's possible that you need more storage than you think for the backup, if the backup utility saves a copy of the existing backup until the new backup is completed as a safety precaution. I'm only guessing about this because I have never seen how the backups are handled. The OS is usually pretty careful about protecting data. The OS installers do this.

How to take a screenshot on your Mac

Capture, Save or Record Screenshots in Mac OS X - Help Desk Geek

OS X Screen Capture Shortcuts

(⌘⬆︎3) Command-Shift-3 Capture the screen to a file

(⌘⬆︎⌃3) Command-Shift-Control-3 Capture the screen to the Clipboard

(⌘⬆︎4) Command-Shift-4 Capture a selection to a file

(⌘⬆︎⌃4) Command-Shift-Control-4 Capture a selection to the Clipboard

(⌘⬆︎5) Command-Shift-5 Invoke new screen grabber

Thank you for your response. I have a 1TB Macbook that I try to backup my iphone x 256G into. It keep saying I dont have enough storage space to back up when I have over 435G unused in my Mac book. Of the used volume others contribute about 295G

So how do I reduce that at least so that I can back up my iphone.

Thanks again

Joseph

Thanks Kappy for this helpful hints I have actually deleted the DropBox that had over 110G on my disk so it freed some of my space to over 500G but the purgable is still high as seen in the screenshots attached Is there no way I can restart from factory setting as one use to do in those early days of Mac. What is the place of Maccleaners I am not a fan though

Thanks Kapp, Find attached the screenshot you requested for

As you can see there is roughly 230GBs of available space of which about 15GBs is in use by the OS but is purgeable, meaning available to the user. 782GBs, approximately, is already in use. There is not enough space on the drive to accommodate the backup of a 256GB iPhone. That is the reason for the warning. This is exactly why I recommend avoiding the Storage tab on About This Mac.

Now, I don't know what you are storing in that 782GBs other than macOS which may take as much as 50GBs but when installed is more like 30GBs after the first start when it sets up caches and work space. The remainder of the storage is use is taken up by your data and your third-party installed software.

I try to keep a fairly trim setup but I have a boot volume that uses 330GBs of a 512GB SSD. I don't use as much storage as you because I'm using a smaller drive and need to be more conservative. It's not hard to use up disk space. This may help you trim down the space on your drive in a careful way.

How to Free Up Space on The Hard Drive

1. You can remove data from your Home folder except for the /Home/Library/ folder.
2. Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on freeing up space on your hard drive.
3. Also, see Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk.
4. What is 'Other' and 'Purgeable' in About This Mac?
5. Files That Make Up the 'Other' Storage Category, and How to Remove Them
6. Free up storage space on your Mac.
7. See Where did my Disk Space go?.
8. Be sure to Empty the Trash to recover the space.
9. Replace the drive with a larger one. Check out OWC for drives, tutorials, and toolkits.
10. Use OmniDiskSweeper or GrandPerspective to search your drive for large files and where they are located.

What is 'Other' and 'Purgeable' in About This Mac? Purgeable space should be returned to free space as needed but it is under system control. The user cannot free up the space.