Catalina showing Half of Disk Space taken up by "Other" Solved while writing this
Context:
I copy photographs to my Mac to do a movie (using imovie) from my holidays, anyway finish the project, couldnt "share to desktop" the final video cause there wasnt enough space... i deleted a few files and created the project and all, and once i finished i started to remove the used files... finally i had like 30G or so of space but still needed to delete the last folder with all the photographs and videos. that folder was 83G of space i wanted to get back
Problem:
Finally deleted the folder, and removed it from the trash can... for my surprise my free space only move to 48G (extra 18G) and i did not got the 83G i was hoping to get... checking the Storage on the about this mac, shows Others is taking 196G...
TS done:
Reboot/restart
Time Capsule solution:
Time capsule is done via external DD, i tried checking for old files without the disk plug and there are none, either way that solution is only to liberate more space which is not what im looking for, im looking for the space i already liberated
Terminal:
Tried to run the sudo purge... no change
Open a case with support, among amusing stuff the asked to do and i comply... the last one was such a disappointment, didn't bother to read the case at all, and just said it was "normal" and "thats the way apple works" and easiest solution was to "format" because there is no way to get that space back...
So i got back to the forums where there is more support, didn't find anything, but that was a clue for me... no one had my problem, found other solutions but nothing similar so it was probably something i did or didn't do..
So before i started to use imovie i notice, the program didnt saved the photos, that means, if i used video A or Photo B... and delete it (because i needed space) it was automatically erased on the project thus i needed to have all the info on the disc at all times... i did check when i started and when i deleted the files for example a goPro video of 10G... i would get those 10G back... so it was for me pretty straight forward.
So i copy the folder to an external drive and deleted the folder but only got a few gigs back, nothing compared to what i should have... after all the TS above i decided to go back to i move and delete the project.. before that i tried to run it, and some pictures and videos were deleted or missing, but there were some there.. i would say half and half... i deleted the project and storage was freed and now i have all those 83G free on my computer!
Note:
there is a bug on the latest Catalina, cause i did some test copying and erasing files, and while i do have the storage i should have freed, its also showing 275G of "other" and not updapting correctly to show what is a file or picture etc.. but the problem with this is that for TS makes it harder to know what is taking into account as "other"
MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 10.12