My early-2015 MacBook Pro has a 256GB SSD Hard Drive. Over 137GB of the storage space is taken up by "Other". What is in this, and can it be removed? I have my photos and my documents all stored in iCloud and still struggle with storage space, due to this "other" category.
Hi Rodney Nielsen,
"Other" refers to files stored inside your apps, along with other data. To manage this category of data, please see this user tip: https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-250002781
The Other category can be reduced, but requires caution in doing so (otherwise app data could be corrupted). Nonetheless, macOS already protects system critical files:
In macOS Catalina or later, there is a separate System category, and it should only take up 15-20 GB at most. That category would include core macOS files and everything that resides on the read-only system volume. The remaining "Other" category may include certain caches, but nothing that would be essential to macOS.
In macOS Mojave or earlier, the "System" and "Other" categories are unified into just "Other". Although the system files and user data reside in the same volume, System Integrity Protection prevents anyone (including the root superuser) from deleting or modifying critical macOS files. That protection can only be disabled from macOS Recovery, and only if explicitly requested from the command line.
The best way to remove the attachments in Outlook would be to use the tools provided by Outlook, if any, to do so. Manually deleting files improperly could cause damage to related apps.
That said, you could use tools such as Disk Inventory X or OmniDiskSweeper to see which folders are taking up the most storage space, and correlate that info to the apps responsible for taking up that storage.
Thank you for your responses. I'm not a super user, but I am not scared to try things, and am interested in what causes these kinds of problems and appreciate the education and opportunity to try a fix.
I'm running Big Sur currently so I have a separate system folder which is of the size you indicated. i'm guessing it must be attachments to emails in Outlook, would you suggest I try deleting those from the emails individually, or use a disk management utility to do so? Does the disk management utility make it easier and faster? If so, one you recommend?
system files you don't want to delete, alter or move.
What is in "Other" in MANAGE STORAGE?
