Finder status bar shows the total space from all volumes, not the free space in the disk

Question

Finder status bar shows the total space from all volumes, not the free space in the disk

In the status bar, Finder displays the amount of disk space that is occupied by all volumes on the Macintosh HD disk as the "available space", not the free disk space for the user.

I believe this is due to the macOS 26.3 update, as I've been checking this value often recently, and Finder was only reporting the available space shown by Disk Utility.

Is anyone else experiencing this issue?

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 26.3

Posted on Feb 18, 2026 7:22 PM

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Answer 1

Feb 18, 2026 8:17 PM in response to Eduardo Rodriguez_Avila

The only place where the Free storage space is shown is within Disk Utility. Ignore the very misleading "Available" storage value shown every where in macOS since it is not synonymous with Free.

The Free space value is the most important storage value in macOS.

Even the Used storage value can be misleading under certain circumstances & configurations.

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Answer 2

steve626

Level 6

15,809 points

Feb 18, 2026 9:49 PM in response to Eduardo Rodriguez_Avila

As noted by HWTech, only Disk Utility shows what space you have available on your drive. Yours shows 142 GB "available."

In the Finder window, a different number is shown but you have blurred out many details and you also have extensive file storage in iCloud, which may affect that calculation if some or all those files have been downloaded physically to your Mac. So again, only Disk Utility shows what you are actually using and how much space is "available."

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