When I go to "about this Mac" and the "Manage Storage" windows on MacOS, it claims that the Mail app is using 70 GB of storage. However, when I go to the mail app in the file browser and the library containers and all that, I see nothing of that size. When I organise messages by size, the largest is around 30 Mb. Any ideas what could be causing this report, and whether it is true or not?
MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 11.0
Benblob688 wrote:
When I go to "about this Mac" and the "Manage Storage" windows on MacOS, it claims that the Mail app is using 70 GB of storage. However, when I go to the mail app in the file browser and the library containers and all that, I see nothing of that size. When I organise messages by size, the largest is around 30 Mb. Any ideas what could be causing this report, and whether it is true or not?
https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/fdd34b25-7364-4553-a816-c070f7e01f8f
You can also check for accumulated mail log files...
From the Finder>Go>Go To Folder, copy&paste:
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Logs/Mail
I have seen anywhere from 12 GB to 700 GB of logs built up here.
You would be safe to delete all those .txt files logs.
There doesn't seem to be much going on in this location (see screenshot). I went up a few directories and the "Mail" directory in /Users/Benblob688/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail only weighs in at ~1 GB. Any more suggestions on why it would think 70 GB? Like I said the largest email is around 30 MB with attachments, so it seems unlikely that I have 2,300 emails of that size to make it total 70 GB.
I have changed the settings on all accounts to only download recent attachments but I wonder if there is a way for me to purge any attachments without deleting the emails? There does not seem to be a way to remove downloads older than x date, for example. Only to set "Download attachments" to "recent" which doesn't seem to delete old message when activated.
I tried this on a few unimportant emails and it appears to permanently remove them rather than allow them to be re-downloaded later when needed. I am glad I did not select-all and try this!
Also, I went to the location where attachments sit in Mail and have attached a screenshot which shows Mail Downloads is 1 GB, not 70 GB. So the report is false or there is something else wrong.
Benblob688 wrote:
I wonder if there is a way for me to purge any attachments without deleting the emails?
remove attachments—
ref: View, save, or delete email attachments in Mail on Mac ...
Very Good Article written by trusted fellow Apple Contributor - Here especially regarding file attachments related to Mail
MacOS Mail Using 70 GB of disk space
