How do I delete Purgeable Space on a Mac?

i think you need to understand it's not about dopamine but getting a job done: i can't download footage i need to work with, because the frame.io app doesn't recognize that i have 700gb purgeable space and just says i have only 20gb of free space. now you can go on all day long how frame.io didn't code their app correctly but some of us just need a solution to a considerable problem, not an ill informed lesson on how apple will magically do everything and one should just lay back.

The purgeable space mostly consists of local snapshots of Time Machine, and also caches, sleep images, swap files and other temporary system files.

To DELETE:

1. Open Terminal from the Applications folder > Utilities.
2. Enter this command and press Enter to list all backup snapshots on your Mac:
3. tmutil listlocalsnapshots /
4. If you don't have local snapshots, jump to the other solution below.
5. Run the following command to delete a chosen local snapshot.
6. sudo tmutil deletelocalsnapshots 2021-06-26-123740
7.  You need to replace 2021-06-26-123740 with the date and timestamp of the snapshot you want to delete.
8. Enter your account password and hit Enter.

1. If you decide to delete all local snapshots at once, run this command:
2. for d in $(tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates | grep "-"); do sudo tmutil deletelocalsnapshots $d; done

If deleting Time Machine local snapshots didn't help you reclaim much free space, try the method below.

A more efficient way to delete purgeable space on Mac is by making a file that grows until the disk is full and then deleting the file. It's worth mentioning that previous attempts to create an empty file and then duplicate the file until it uses up your Mac's free space to force your operating system to clear purgeable space to store the file no longer works with APFS. 

How to purge Mac hard drive with command lines:

1. Open Terminal from the Applications folder > Utilities.
2. Type in the following command and hit Enter.
3. dd if=/dev/zero bs=100m of=~/Test
4. This command will create a file named Test that is filled with zeros in your Home directory. The file will grow fast initially and slow down when it's close to full. You will receive notifications warning you, "Your disk is almost full." Just ignore it because it will keep popping up until your disk is completely full.
5.  When you see the message "No space left on device," execute another command to permanently delete the file.
6. rm -rf ~/Test

In the Terminal application, you can run the purge command which forces disk cache to be flushed and emptied. I would reserve this to a time when you have no open documents or running user applications:

sudo purge
Password:

Enter the administrator password. Nothing will echo to the screen. I do not run this very often as the operating system is quite capable of managing itself.

Hello,

my problem is similar, 180 gb available but 165 purgeable resulting in 15 free

when trying to install a newer version of Mac OS >> not enough free space.

And deleting large file doesn’t do anything.

i backed up my music library 50 gb. (Trashed it & empty the trash) It just increased both values but free space remain 15.

the purge didn’t change anything

thx for your help.

I was able to clear my purgeable data successfully. I used Disk Utility>File> New Image and created images based on what size Disk Utility said I had useable on my HD. I had these created to my desktop for easy deletion later on. I ended up having to create 6 different images as after each creation the purgeable data would decrease and open up more space on the hard drive. I got the purgeable data down to 300 MB from 34 GB. I then deleted all the newly created images to trash and emptied the trash.

purge didn’t change anything

The purge Utility has absolutely nothing to do with purgeable space.

macOS should clear any purgeable space if needed. Some poorly written apps will check free space instead of asking for storage space and fail because of the way macOS manages it.

yep! The above solution is actually one which works. "~/Test" did not work since dd is apparently not able to resolve "~".

There was an interesting behaviour too. "dd" stopped at a level of freespace before I ran TM and rebooted last time. Maybe, the first "Test" file was also too large, since it was around 150GB. "df -h ~" still reported space available and it was growing each time I ran it.

I started to start "dd" all over each time after "dd" said "No space left on device" with a bit different file names, like Test1, Test2, and watched what happens with "df -h ~". macOS started to purge disk space but this was slower than "dd" was taking it. So I needed to start "dd" over and over after each "No space left on device". I got to a level where "Get Info" for SSD reported only 370MB and 1GB was available.

After this, it took around 30s for "rm -rf Test*" ;-) to finish, but after this, I'm back to the "Avail" amount in the shell at the level which was actually reported in "Storage" in "Settings" which is what "df" tells you, plus "purgable" amount from "Get Info"! Thanks "soniksaint"!

I think Apple should provide some tools for this if they do not allow to upgrade SSD ;-)

I hope it helps others!

With all due regard, I have tried this so many times I lost count and the Mac NEVER NEVER regained any space after a reboot or shutdown and restart. Apple got a weird bug and refuses to admit to it. Run the script I provided. Yes HDD, SDD all have write limits but you would probable have to do the script everyhour of everyday just to knock off a 1% or 2% of writes. I only run it if Pureable is more than 10% of drive space, although 20% would be OK too. And it only takes 1 or 2 write sessions.

hi just went thru this issue for a small MacBook needing >16gb to upgrade the OS, with 41gb available and 25gb purgeable, for whatever reason the OS upgrade doesn't trigger a purge. This solution in the Apple dev forum from 'dotster' provides steps to create very large file(s) of random stuff, this ran and sent the disk info bonkers and eventually this suddenly dumped the purgeable space from 25gb to 400mb; deleted the files to fully reclaim the available space and was able to comfortably proceed with the upgrade and the rest of my life with this mac.

Purgeable Space Problems | Apple Developer Forums 

I had also done some other stuff before forcing the purge with not much impact - turned off cloud photo sync I didn't need and purged some other cache and cloud files I didn't need which should have freed up several gb but didn't do anything to the available space for some reason. Also turned off auto backup on TM advised somewhere. Following this whole process and OS upgrade, I am left with 48gb available and only 19mb purgeable.

If you've been using Time Machine for some time you could have a buildup of local snapshots which are taking up space.

Launch Disk Utility and look to see how many local snapshots are on your boot drive. A while ago when I was running Ventura I was down to about 50 GB. I launched DU and saw that I had 50 snapshots. I deleted 49 of them of them and regained 360 GB of free space:

So give it a try and see if it helps. Always keep one snapshot for safety sake.

Although purgeable space is reported in various places, the system will quietly & automatically use purgeable space as it needs it. Also, a reboot usually frees up purgeable space, at least on your system drive.

The purge command resets disk cache the same as a reboot would do. I wouldn't spend any more mental time on wondering what Disk Utility is reporting and just let macOS take care of that for you.

I am on my Mac from early morning to late at night and I never care about any purgeable storage, or even run Disk Utility for that matter.

I am also having grief with purgeable space on my MacBook Pro. I am running Sonoma 14.6.1.

I have run sudo purge from a terminal and no relief. I have rebooted and shutdown an restarted multiple times.

I know that the purgeable space is some video files that I have edited and copied back to my NAS the moved them to trash and emptied the trash. I feel that when I empty the trash the filed should be deleted and the space recovered.

I even tried running first aid in the disk utility and still the purgeable space remains.

Ran into the purgeable space issue while trying to update the SD nav card for my car. The Kia updater app does not recognize purgeable space as being available and would not download the update. I tried multiple times to delete files and manually purge with terminal, but could not gain any available space. I came across another posting that suggested turning off "optimize mac storage" under the iCloud settings. Did that, rebooted and watched the purgeable space number rapidly decrease. Downloaded the update and turned optimize mac storage space back on afterwards. Just need to remember to do this the next time around.