home directory size problem

My HOME directory is on an external SSD due to lack of space on my main drive. . My finder tells me that my home directory is 601GB, of which the usual suspects (Movies, Music & Pictures) account for only 70GB. The actual culprit appears to be the Library folder which takes up a whopping 516GB! I don't understand how this can be. How can I best clean and reduce this folder?

I wanted to do this because I am having great difficulty with starting up since upgrading to Monterey, which only boots up if I do it in safe mode, and even then takes ages losing in under my usual userid (although much quicker logging in as another admin account.)

Or am I barking up the wrong tree anyway....

Mac mini, macOS 12.2

Posted on Feb 23, 2022 1:33 PM

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MartinR

Level 7

25,460 points

Posted on Feb 24, 2022 6:07 AM

Peter Kwee wrote:

The actual culprit appears to be the Library folder which takes up a whopping 516GB!

Try using an app like Daisy Disk or Disk Space Analyzer to examine the drive and the ~/Library folder.

I recently did the same and discovered multiple iPhone backups taking up over 120GB. They are stored in ~/Library.

Also, if you are using Mail, MS Outlook or other 3rd party email apps, they also store their data in ~/Library and can take up a lot of space.

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home directory size problem

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