MacBook Air on OS 11.6.7 claims I'm out of memory so that programs won't work, but Disk Utility says that 105.78 gb of that memory is occupied on "other volumes," leaving me with 20.7 mb "free." I have a lot more than 105.78 gb of memory on other volumes (thumb and disk drives) but I don't think that's what Disk Utility is allowing me.
Any suggestions?
-Bill
[Edited by Moderator]
MacBook Air 13″, macOS 11.6
Howdy,
It sounds like you are running out of space on your boot volume. The OS and apps needs room on the boot volume for caches, temporary files and the like to work. It needs to be free space on the boot volume not other drives.
If you have space on other drives you may be able to move files from your boot volume to those other drives and remove them from your boot volume to free up space. Note that doesn't count as a backup if you delete the files from your boot drive, so you should still have another copy backed up.
Please see Free up storage space on your Mac
ivan
Howdy,
It sounds like you are running out of space on your boot volume. The OS and apps needs room on the boot volume for caches, temporary files and the like to work. It needs to be free space on the boot volume not other drives.
If you have space on other drives you may be able to move files from your boot volume to those other drives and remove them from your boot volume to free up space. Note that doesn't count as a backup if you delete the files from your boot drive, so you should still have another copy backed up.
Please see Free up storage space on your Mac
ivan
Memory is RAM ( Random Access Memory ) and is filled up and empties as the Computer needs Applications to load and unload.
Drive Capacity is a totally different matter and when the computer warns the user " Running Low on Space " that is time to action this before the computer can and may cease to Boot-up at ALL
It is suggested to keep at least 15% to 20% of the Drive Total Capacity as Empty Space for good operations of the computer.
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The final word from Apple on Managing the " Other/ System Data “ Category
Other / System Data: 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.
MacBook Air claims to be out of memory
