Disk space critically low

larkholmer54 wrote:

I am regularly being told by Terminal that I am critically low on disk space.

I have 36gb available of 121. Is this critically low?

Will it affect system upgrades?

No upgrades will be possible.

Terminal and Finder disagree on what is "available". Terminal and other low-level tools look at "free" space. The Finder and other higher-level tools (like About this Mac > Storage) will report "available" space. The "available" value is what could be made available if you needed it. But in practice, if you are getting error messages, then you need it. And your system is probably so overwhelmed that it can't make enough storage free.

I suggest deleting some files and getting an external hard drive to archive files. Note that Time Machine is a backup. It is not an archive. You need to move some files off to another disk.

larkholmer54 wrote:

I am regularly being told by Terminal that I am critically low on disk space.

I have 36gb available of 121. Is this critically low?

Will it affect system upgrades?

To function efficiently a SSD likes to have 20-25% free disk space.

a HDD like to have 10-15% free disk space.

If I did the math correct you have 29.75% GB free storage...

How to free up storage space on your Mac - Apple Support

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206996

Thank you for posting in the Apple Support Communities. I see no one has responded to your post yet. To assist the community in replying, you might consider providing more information about what you’re experiencing. Including the following details in your post may be helpful:

What is happening when you get notified? If you receive an error message, what does it say?

What device is this happening with? Which software version?

Are you able to reproduce the issue? What actions do you take to reproduce it?

The more information you provide, the better chance the community will be able to offer some additional guidance.

Have a great day!

You would know. You cannot accidentally download Xcode, intakes an hour just to download, and as long again to install. Yes, it installs in the /Applications folder.

I only suggested that because it is larger than any ordinary Application, so IF you had installed it as an experiment, removing would provide some small relief.

This is storage, not memory. And unfortunately, the display you are looking at is not helpful. You will have to locate large files manually.

Macs with only 128 GB storage will be perpetually short of space. 128GB is not large enough for ordinary household use. That Mac is offered mainly for students who tend to put essentially NOTHING on it. All other users will end up being short of space without using an additional external drive.

Yes, 58Gb of system use is ordinary. If you have installed Xcode and do not use it, you could gain back about 18Gb by un-installing Xcode.

Tools to find the "boat anchors" include:

OmniDiskSweeper

DiskInventoryX, described in this article:

What is “Other” storage on a Mac, and how… - Apple Community

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larkholmer54 wrote:

Many thanks. I guess it might be time to dump some applications.

It is very unlikely that any apps would be large enough to affect your overall level of storage.