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Free up "Other" space

Hi im trying to free space on my hard drive but it says 400 GB in "Other". I think most of it is from movies but they are in my icloud they shouldn't be taking up space on my hard drive

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Dec 24, 2021 12:39 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Dec 25, 2021 8:20 AM

See a thread https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251789307

See used and available storage space on your Mac - Apple Support

  • Other Users: Contains files created and modified by other user accounts on your Mac.

In case if you have more than one user account in home folder and some data is shared delete them Delete a user or group on Mac - Apple Support

Or any folders have some files / archives in them will occupy Macintosh hard drive space , right click on them and delete .

4 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Dec 25, 2021 8:20 AM in response to colby39

See a thread https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251789307

See used and available storage space on your Mac - Apple Support

  • Other Users: Contains files created and modified by other user accounts on your Mac.

In case if you have more than one user account in home folder and some data is shared delete them Delete a user or group on Mac - Apple Support

Or any folders have some files / archives in them will occupy Macintosh hard drive space , right click on them and delete .

Dec 25, 2021 8:35 AM in response to colby39

"Other" storage is storage managed by the system. You are not supposed to worry about it, but trust the system to free storage, when it is needed for other purposes, see: See used and available storage space on your Mac – Apple Support (UK)


  • " Other: Contains files that don’t fall into the categories listed here. This category primarily includes files and data used by the system, such as log files, caches, VM files and other runtime system resources. Also included are temporary files, fonts, app support files and plug-ins. You can't manage the contents of this category. The contents are managed by macOS, and the category varies in size depending on the current state of your Mac."


Files that are temporarily downloaded from iCloud contribute to "Other". You can free the storage used by downloaded songs or movies by using "Remove download" in "Music" and "Remove Download" in TV.




Jan 8, 2022 10:51 AM in response to inukasan

The "Other" storage also includes your local time Machine snapshots and they will b huge, after deleting a complete Photos Library. If you are desperate to free local storage to be able to install a system upgrade, make a current Time Machine backup, then disable Time Machine temporarily. This should remove any local snapshots and give you some free storage back. But be sure to enable Time Machine again, once you succeeded with installing the system upgrade.

See: About Time Machine local snapshots - Apple Support


Jan 8, 2022 10:12 AM in response to léonie

Hello,


Yes, this is exactly how i thought the idea of iCloud works, the system takes care of it for me, yet, eventhough i have turned on the 'optimize space' option both in my iPhone and on my Macbook, both devices are running out of space on the local disk.


iCloud would have free space its, yet i think the system is somehow stuck maybe because it is not doing that? I suspected that its because my lack of update on the latest Monterey, because lack of local space! -> Stuck!


Any other way of making sure all pics are in the iCloud, but removed from the library? I just few moments ago managed to remove pic from the library and still keep them in iCloud by turning off iCloud photos and sayin yes to 'Delete photos from Mac'


BUT:: still is claiming that local disk has as little space as before doing that, even though i deleted 6000 pictures! Did already restart MAc.


Do i need a computer doctor now?




Free up "Other" space

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