Not enough space for upgrade BlueStacks

The Bluestacks web site indicates that minimum free space is 8 GB but recommended free space is 32 GB. I am surmising that the installer is looking for 32 GB.

As Ronasara has pointed out, a drive with low free disk space will stop running properly. One reason for this is that some software uses more than the physical available memory and hence has to page to disk. For instance, software that requires 4 GB physical memory simply to execute, but needs to use 16 GB while running, will need use disk space for that additional 12 GB if your Mac does not have 16 GB physical memory available. Bluestacks recommends 8 GB physical memory, but even if you have that, the MacOS and other software may be using most of that, hence disk space is needed far above the 600 MB you mention above to run the software.

Bluestacks is gaming software and I expect that means its memory (and disk space requirements could grow very large when in use. They are possibly restricting installation only to systems that appear to have at least the recommended resources available so the software can be used in a reasonable way.Hence the installer may be looking for 32 GB free disk space and 8 GB physical memory.

You should stay far above those minimums. It is recommended to keep 15%-20% free disk space on a modern Mac. So if you have a 250 GB drive, that means ~ 50 Gb should be free, it is often needed for paging to disk, scratch space, etc. More if your drive is larger.

The Bluestacks installer may be enforcing the above minimums to avoid getting complaints from users that Bluestacks is crashing their computers, or is running very slowly, or freezes. I suspect that that disk space free requirement is not to accommodate the much smaller download, but to ensure that the program is actually usable after it is installed.

You need to free up a lot more than 22 GB.

zacklloyd9 wrote:

I have not let my hard drive get too full, and this thing is not having enough room, even though I have freed up over 64gb of hard drive space....

It seems to be the greediest, most resource hogging application in the universe, and every single month it wants to do an new upgrade that requires exponentially more free space to even start, but then when it is finished, it turns out it was only a 160mb update. So, what in the world did it need 100gb of free space for a 160mb update for??

It doesn't sound like a problem with your Mac, but rather a bug in Bluestacks, it is unable to properly sense the amount of available space on the computer. At some point you might decide to simply stop using software like this that is poorly written and doesn't even provide any visible support to its users and customers.

I have some thoughts to share with you. An update (of any app) requires a certain amount of free space to download to. After it's downloaded, it then will typically overwrite the old app. We can discuss how to evaluate how much space you do or do not have, but your app needs more for whatever reason. Second point. If you allow your hard drive to get too full, the computer will stop functioning. It appears that you may be at the point where it behooves you to either clear out some files to make more available space, or you need to install an external disk. (Which I recommend.) Then you can transfer files onto it and delete them from the hard drive to clear needed space. These days, external drives are available in all sizes at reasonable prices. They are very compact, unlike those older models, and easy to install with provided USB cables. Most of them do not require external power. Sometimes, you may have to reformat the drive, though. That's what I recommend. Easy to do and problem solved.

Boot into Safe Mode according to Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support and try to install from there. Then reboot normally.

NOTE: Safe Mode boot can take up to nearly twice as long as a normal boot as it's doing the following; 

• Verifies your startup disk and attempts to repair directory issues, if needed

• Loads only required kernel extensions (prevents 3rd party kernel/extensions from loading)

• Prevents Startup Items and Login Items from opening automatically

• Disables user-installed fonts 

• Deletes font caches, kernel cache, and other system cache files