Understanding Mac storage figures

To make things a little more complex, from what I understand the newer APFS (Apple File System) does some things to make file management more efficient, but it can be confusing. Say you create a 10 GB file. You copy it to change it but keep an original. The new one takes up almost no space... but will have the changes. If you delete one or the other of the 10 GB files, you get back very little space. Not sure if there is a way to know how much you do get back.

The edited bit is not going to iCloud... unless you have the file stored there. It is just that the local files on the same volume maintain info on changes from the "original".

All of the values displayed in any of those built-in "Storage" tools are bogus. Don't look at them at all. At best, you will only get confused. At worst, you'll take some action with possibly catastrophic results.

These user interfaces are designed for Apple's "ideal" user. This is someone who has purchased a premium device with at least 500 GB of storage. They have a single user account on the device.

Unfortunately, you have deviated from that ideal usage. Your hard drive is too small. You've compounded that problem by adding a second user. You are likely to have storage problems in the future. Please do not use Apple's built-in storage tools to resolve those problems. They won't help you.

The only useful built-in storage information you have is in Disk Utility. Use this to keep track of your free storage. If you start to run out of storage, you will need to take action. You can purchase more iCloud storage and configure Music, Photos, and iCloud Drive to fully utilize that iCloud storage. You will have to pay monthly for this. Did you think you were going to save money with a smaller hard drive? 😄

Note that in many place, you may see "available" storage displayed. This is not the same as "free" storage. This is another area of great confusion among users. It is very common for people to run out of storage while still having many hundreds of gigabytes "available". You will experience this, I'm sure. You cannot delete your way out of this problem because you cannot actually delete files. This situation normally resolves itself after a couple of days when Apple's system deletion tools run and finally erase the files that you've flagged for deletion.

In the future, buy a separate computer for each user. Never buy a hard drive smaller than 500 GB. 1 TB would be much better. You can use an external drive for Time Machine (which I recommend) and for archiving important files. But I don't recommend trying to use any kind of external drive for other purposes. It won't be a good experience.

Josieb47 wrote:

Thanks for your reply, I do use a separate hard drive for Time Machine, I have a family Apple storage plan, that at the present is sufficient for our needs. Virtually all our photos and files are stored on iCloud so I have no need for anything greater than 250gb. So I disagree that my hard drive is too small. I will take your advice and just use disk utility in the future.

In the U.S., 200GB iCloud is $2.99/month and 2TB iCloud is $9.99/month. Those come to $36/year or $120/year. The alternative is to obtain a larger internal drive and store your information locally on the internal drive.

The last time I checked, an extra 250 GB (total of 500 GB) was $200 on a new iMac, and an extra 750 GB (total of 1 TB) was $400, and an extra 1750 GB (total of 2 TB) was $800.

So if you plan to use your Mac for ~ 3 years, the iCloud approach might be less expensive, while if you plan to use your Mac for 7 years or more, getting more internal storage might be less expensive.

There are also other factors. For instance, when most of your files are in iCloud, when you obtain a new computer or device, all those files are immediately available; when stored internally on the Mac, they must be manually migrated.

Josieb47 wrote:

Just to reinforce, how misleading I found your reply

You might want to do more research on that. This kind of confusion about storage with recent versions of macOS is one of the most common questions posted here in the forums. I rarely even reply to them anymore because it is so tedious and difficult to explain.

Your reply is unusual, and curiously so. It is possible that your question was sincere. But there does seem to be some malicious activity in this thread, so I won't reply again. If your question was sincere, then I wish you good luck and caution you to never trust people on the internet. You never know when stalkers are lurking. Well, almost never.