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User profile for user: ringspa
ringspa Author
User level: Level 1
140 points

How to free up "purgeable space" for OS upgrade

Hi running a MacBook on Monterey 12.7.2 with small HDD only 121gb it's telling me "Available: 41.47 GB (25.57 GB purgeable)". The upgrade to 12.7.6 is blocked saying "Updating requires 16.22 GB of disk space"


How do I get to the 41GB it's saying is available, to allow the upgrade.


I see other posts saying not to worry about the "purgeable" the OS will free it up automatically but it's not doing that if I really have 41GB available. I've done sudo purge, cleaned up some apps, caches, safari cache and other basic stuff I can control but that stuff was relatively small.


Also I have 19GB in the Library directory under my user, 5GB in the Library at system level. Is there something I can turn off or purge here. Caches is only 370MB. What's taking up the 19GB and can I optimize that - I don't care too much about having anything on this laptop or some sort of cloud data sync down to this device if that is happening, as it's not my main device it can just be a brick to surf web or zoom people on the go.

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 12.7

Posted on Sep 26, 2024 5:45 AM

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2 replies
User profile for user: ringspa
ringspa Author
User level: Level 1
140 points

Sep 26, 2024 4:45 PM in response to ringspa

ok I solved it after searching many posts this process from user dotster to create a large file was the only thing that budged it Purgeable Space Problems | Apple Developer Forums 


I deleted local copy of cloud photos I didn't need, turned off auto backups in TM, cleaned up some stuff in my cloud drive - all this should have given back a few gb but didn't help.


I let this other process run to create big file > 40gb, it sent the disk info stats bonkers and eventually purgeable space suddenly tanked from 25gb to 400mb and the space available started to hit 4gb and I stopped the process and deleted the files.


There seems to be a gap in the OS upgrade which should do this purge to allow an upgrade to proceed if there is space.

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How to free up "purgeable space" for OS upgrade

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