I am at 11.4 now. Typically in the past, the download/upgrade didn't work because of not enough storage, and Apple has been horrible about clarifying up front how much storage one needs...
MacBook Air 13″, macOS 11.4
Where is the 36 GB coming from?? Yes , 36 GB is required if upgrading from some previous versions of macOS.
As for moving from Big Sur 11.4 to latest - no exact figure is known. Would suggest 15% of the Total Drive as Empty Space is Safe enough to run the 11.5.1 update on top of 11.4.
The files that you have control over are located in the Documents, Downloads, Pictures, Music and Movies folders. You can use either of these two free apps, GrandPerspective or OmniDiscSweeper, to find the largest files on your drive so you can determine if they can be deleted or moved to an external HD for storage.
Note: you can empty the Downloads folder after the apps and/or updates that were downloaded have been installed or applied. Many users have found a couple of Gigabytes of files in their Downloads folder which are no longer needed.
Ignore this. I see by researching further almost 36G is needed. Wow. I'm stunned. OK, off to finding a hard drive to offload 15G...
Ah Apple telegraphing the requirements for moving within the Big Sur 11.4 to 11.5.1.
Would be nice but that would put us Volunteers out of business too ( humour here ).
Welcome and Thank you too :-) Still in business offering advise.
Thx. I keep all of that up to date but appreciate the thought.
Thanks. I vaguely recall someone else in the past saying "15% of your total storage." I'd think that Apple could at least say that up front, rather than making people experiment and go searching for answers. I think the last time I needed about 18G-22G. Much appreciated. I'll keep that "formula" in mind for the future.
How much storage is needed for this (11.5.1) upgrade? I have 23G and yet the download crashes
