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I have 914.85 GB of "Other" storage. I'm not sure what this is but it's significantly more than any other application on my Mac.

How do we cleanup the "other" storage?


Posted on Apr 25, 2023 12:41 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Apr 25, 2023 12:49 PM

“Other” storage on Mac is files that don’t easily fall into the defined categories of “Audio" “Movies” “Photos” “Apps” and “Backups”. The types of files found in “Other" would include: • macOS system files, • temporary files, • app plugins and extensions, • browser and Mail caches, • documents like .pdf, .psd, .doc, • disk images and archives like .dmg, .tar, .zip


You cannot directly manage the contents of this category. That is done by macOS, and the category varies in size depending on the current state of your Mac.


What you can do...

• Empty the Trash in the Dock.

• Empty the trash in the Photos app.

• Delete unused and unneeded installers from your downloads folder and desktop.

• Transfer files that you don’t use daily to an external drive. Files that take up the most room are movies, images and music.

• Force Time Machine to delete local snapshots:

About Time Machine local snapshots - Apple Support


This from Apple on the subject of storage management:

Free up storage space on your Mac - Apple Support


And this for a better, more thorough explanation:

What is “Other” and what can I do about it? - Apple Community (Kappy)


5 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Apr 25, 2023 12:49 PM in response to JeffWatsonOysterDvp

“Other” storage on Mac is files that don’t easily fall into the defined categories of “Audio" “Movies” “Photos” “Apps” and “Backups”. The types of files found in “Other" would include: • macOS system files, • temporary files, • app plugins and extensions, • browser and Mail caches, • documents like .pdf, .psd, .doc, • disk images and archives like .dmg, .tar, .zip


You cannot directly manage the contents of this category. That is done by macOS, and the category varies in size depending on the current state of your Mac.


What you can do...

• Empty the Trash in the Dock.

• Empty the trash in the Photos app.

• Delete unused and unneeded installers from your downloads folder and desktop.

• Transfer files that you don’t use daily to an external drive. Files that take up the most room are movies, images and music.

• Force Time Machine to delete local snapshots:

About Time Machine local snapshots - Apple Support


This from Apple on the subject of storage management:

Free up storage space on your Mac - Apple Support


And this for a better, more thorough explanation:

What is “Other” and what can I do about it? - Apple Community (Kappy)


Apr 25, 2023 3:17 PM in response to JeffWatsonOysterDvp

The Other category is a potpourri of files which can include:


• System temporary files

• macOS system folders

• Archives and disk images (.zip, .iso, etc. - often found in the Downloads folder)

• Personal user data

• Files from the user’s library (Application Support, iCloud files, screensavers, etc.)

• Cache files: browser, Mail

• Mail messages & attachments

• Fonts, plugins, extensions

• Safari reading list

• iTunes backups

• Crud resulting from jailbreaking your iDevice

• Game data

• Saved data files

• Call history

• Notes

• Media

• Voice memos

• Other files that are not recognized by a Spotlight search

• Media files that cannot be classified by Spotlight as a media file because they are located inside of a package

• Files created and modified by other user accounts on your Mac.


They can be located anywhere on your hard drive.



The files that you have control over are located in the Documents, Downloads, Pictures, Music and Movies folders.  You can use this free app, GrandPerspective, to find the largest files on your drive so you can determine if they can be deleted or moved to an external HD for storage.


Note: you can empty the Downloads folder after the apps and/or updates that were downloaded have been installed or applied.  Some users have found a couple of Gigabytes of files in their Downloads folder which are no longer needed. 


I have 914.85 GB of "Other" storage. I'm not sure what this is but it's significantly more than any other application on my Mac.

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