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Hi, I'm trying to update my Mac, and it says it cannot install the update because there is not enough free space on the disk, where it would require 17.87GB of free space. But I check my storage and it says I have 53GB available. What can I do?
MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 12.5
”Available” is not, alas, the same as “Free”.
Select your drive in the Finder and press Command-I to open the Info window.
It will tell you how much space is considered “free” and how much is “purgeable”.
Ideally, all that available space should be used immediately when needed, but macOS is a bit too jealous of it.
One way in which this space may be retained is in the form of “local snapshots” of Time Machine.
Paste the following in Terminal and tell us what the result is:
tmutil listlocalsnapshots /
”Available” is not, alas, the same as “Free”.
Select your drive in the Finder and press Command-I to open the Info window.
It will tell you how much space is considered “free” and how much is “purgeable”.
Ideally, all that available space should be used immediately when needed, but macOS is a bit too jealous of it.
One way in which this space may be retained is in the form of “local snapshots” of Time Machine.
Paste the following in Terminal and tell us what the result is:
tmutil listlocalsnapshots /
Mac says I don't have enough space for update, but I do
