Macbook Storage Shows Different Totals for Applications

I've created this to help those whose Macbooks have almost full storage but the totals of the individual parts don't equal the total shown so they can't figure out why their storage shows as so full.

The problem is the OS level you've reached. I worked with Apple Support. It's a known problem. I bet when you view your Storage area in System Preferences the System Data category (at the bottom) endlessly cycles. Cleaning out the cache files will not solve it. You have to do a back up and then reinstall the operating system. The steps are too much to go into here. DO NOT have anything plugged into your computer other than the power when doing the reinstall. DO NOT restore from back up during the re-installation of the OS. Skip for the moment. Once the OS is re-loaded you will likely have to do an update to the most current version (for me it was Sonoma 14.3). Once your computer's OS is fully updated, THEN you can restore from the backup you created. My backups are on an external drive. Once I did this my system look just as it should.