📢 Newsroom Update
The iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro lineups, Apple Watch Series 10, the new black titanium Apple Watch Ultra 2, AirPods 4, and new colors for AirPods Max are now available! Learn more >
The iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro lineups, Apple Watch Series 10, the new black titanium Apple Watch Ultra 2, AirPods 4, and new colors for AirPods Max are now available! Learn more >
You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!
When you sign up with your Apple ID, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.
When you sign up with your Apple ID, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.
I cannot update my MacBook because it says I do not have enough disk space
MacBook Air 13″, macOS 10.14
is there a way to purchase more storage on the disk?
is there a way to purchase more storage on the disk?
To free up disk space on your Mac:
I recommend first checking what is taking up the most space (Apple menu > About this Mac > Storage tab) and then deciding which items to remove based on this information.
You can get more ideas on how to free up disk space by following the instructions in this article.
Or you can watch these videos from Apple:
How to free up space on your Mac on macOS Catalina or earlier
How to free up space on your Mac in macOS Ventura
Instead of removing data, you can also increase storage space on your Mac by using external storage (hard drive or SSD) or cloud storage services like iCloud, Google Drive, or Dropbox.
iCloud is the most convenient cloud storage for Macs as it is integrated into the system. You can also use it on multiple Apple devices. They give only 5GB free, but you can learn how to buy more iCloud storage here.
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.
You will need a minimum of 50 GB of free space for system upgrades. For optimal performance it's recommended to maintain a minimum of 80-100 GB of free space.
More info on this would be as follows:
Free up Drive Space
It is generally considered optimal to alway keep at least 15% to 20% of the Total Drives’ Capacity to be kept as Empty Space, to allow the system to do general housekeeping tasks. Allowing the computer to drop below these levels will eventually cause reduced or poor system performance.
The following links can assist in identifying what is taking up space on the Internal Drive and provide possible ways to remove data that is using excessive amounts of drive space.
➡️ Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac
➡️ What is “Other” storage on a Mac, and how can I clean it out?
➡️ Free up storage space on your Mac
➡️ How to delete Time Machine snapshots on your Mac
Old Toad wrote:
Ptaxey wrote:
iCloud is the most convenient cloud storage for Macs as it is integrated into the system. You can also use it on multiple Apple devices. They give only 5GB free, but you can learn how to buy more iCloud storage here.
iCloud storage is only for iPhones and iPads.
You seem to know nothing about how iCloud Drive works. The only syncing is if you turn on Desktop & Documents in iCloud Drive. Even those two locations can be "optimized" where little used files are kept only in the cloud. Everything else in iCloud Drive only exists in the cloud.
iCloud Photos can be either a duplicate or an optimized library such that low-res images are stored on the Mac and full-res are stored in the cloud.
You don't copy the Photos Library to iCloud Drive. You just turn on iCloud Photos. It can be a mirror or it can be optimized.
Ptaxey wrote:
iCloud is the most convenient cloud storage for Macs as it is integrated into the system. You can also use it on multiple Apple devices. They give only 5GB free, but you can learn how to buy more iCloud storage here.
iCloud storage is only for iPhones and iPads.
For Macs it's a syncing feature which means the iCloud Library and local library are identical and any change to either, i.e. addition, edit or deletion (intentional or accidental) will be reproduced on all devices using iCloud Library and the same iCloud ID.
You can use iCloud Drive to store files, i.e. the original image and/or edited files, but not the Photos library. They would have to be exported out the the Photos library and then added to the iCloud Drive. However, even the iCloud drive as well as the iCloud Library will mirror on the Mac what's in them. So you're not saving any space.
The only true backup is to another drive like the one I referenced in my previous post.
Old Toad wrote:
Barney-15E wrote:
No, they are not mirrored. You can download ones you wish to use locally.
Not if you don't have internet access. That's why they are mirrored so then can be accesses at any time.
https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/06f4bff3-04db-4eda-afe4-c9173041a47f
None of them have to be mirrored. You can remove the downloads on all of them and they will not be mirrored, only placeholders.
With Optimize Storage, it will manage the files if you don't have enough space automatically, but you can override those including removing all downloads. That wouldn't be very convenient, but possible.
You can get a portable SSD drive to put files on that is easy to take along with your laptop. I recommend drives from OWC (MacSales.com) as they have proven reliability, excellent customer support and warranties. Consider this one: 1TB OWC Envoy Pro mini
An MBA can't have its internal drive up-graded.
The point I'm trying to make is that iCloud Drive is not off computer storage and that all files aded to the iCD is mirrored on the boot drive in the Users/Home/Library/Mobile Documents even if the Desktop and Documents is not selected:
So there's no saving of space on the boot drive unless one selects "Optimize Mac Storage" and that doesn't kick in until the free space reaches a certain percentage of the overall space. I believe I read that was around 20% but that's just a guess.
The files are kept on the local drive in case the user does not have internet access and what to edit a file. It's the same as the iCloud Photos Library.
my MacBook Air (Macintosh HD has a 121 GB Flash Storage of which 57 GB is “other” which I cannot access?? There is only 14 GB space which is not enough to update IOS. What can I do??
Barney-15E wrote:
No, they are not mirrored. You can download ones you wish to use locally.
Not if you don't have internet access. That's why they are mirrored so then can be accesses at any time.
No, they are not mirrored. You can download ones you wish to use locally.
How do I free up disk space on my Mac
