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Mail Using Too Much Space

My 245GB disk has 80GB consumed by Mail. I only have 100 emails. . Why is so much space consumed?

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 11.6

Posted on Jan 3, 2023 10:10 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jan 4, 2023 2:36 PM

I FOUND THE SOLUTION!!!. Went into Finder and searched for files with he name "mail" in them. Found some directories and started familiarising myself with them, looking for patterns. (At this point I had fully disconnected Gmail from Apple mail.). You have to dig deep, but eventually I discovered mail messages. Since I was fully disconnected from Gmail, I started to move some of the higher level directories to Trash. (Like "important" for instance.). None of these files appeared to be large. But when I emptied the Trash, it deleted over 300,000 files. AND my storage is back to reasonable levels.


Case Solved!!!

2 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jan 4, 2023 2:36 PM in response to Moodynow

I FOUND THE SOLUTION!!!. Went into Finder and searched for files with he name "mail" in them. Found some directories and started familiarising myself with them, looking for patterns. (At this point I had fully disconnected Gmail from Apple mail.). You have to dig deep, but eventually I discovered mail messages. Since I was fully disconnected from Gmail, I started to move some of the higher level directories to Trash. (Like "important" for instance.). None of these files appeared to be large. But when I emptied the Trash, it deleted over 300,000 files. AND my storage is back to reasonable levels.


Case Solved!!!

Jan 4, 2023 1:37 PM in response to Moodynow

Hi there Moodynow,


Thank you for posting to Apple Support Communities.


We understand you're trying to manage the storage space that email accounts in Mail on Mac is occupying. There's a great article here that can help. Take a look: Free up storage space for email accounts in Mail on Mac


That should help. Let us know if you have any questions.


Take care.


Mail Using Too Much Space

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