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Q: My new Macbook Pro Applications consumes my storage.

My new Macbook Pro Retina Display Applications consumes my storage the most. I'm confused because only few weeks had passed and I did not download lots of applications, yet the apps consumes 50gb/120.11gb of my memory.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Yosemite (10.10.3)

Posted on Sep 21, 2015 10:33 AM

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Q: My new Macbook Pro Applications consumes my storage.

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  • by dominic23,

    dominic23 dominic23 Sep 21, 2015 10:45 AM in response to inkerrdible
    Level 8 (42,105 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 21, 2015 10:45 AM in response to inkerrdible

       Re-index Macintosh HD.

     

       Spotlight reindexing will take a while to finish.

       System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy

     

       http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2409

     

       You will see a new category  “Other” in the Storage Display.

       About “Other”:

       http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202867

     

    Note:

      If you don’t have Macintosh HD icon shown  on the desktop,

      Finder > Preferences > General > Show these items on the desktop:

      Enable “Hard disks”.

     

      System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy

      Drag the Macintosh HD into the Privacy pane of the Spotlight window.

     

      When you add Macintosh HD to the Privacy pane of Spotlight

      You will get a dialog box  like this.

    Screen Shot 2015-09-21 at 13.44.24 PM.png

     

      Click “OK”

     

      Highlight the Macintosh HD and click the  minus button at the lower right corner of the window.

     

      When  Macintosh HD is prevented  from  searching by Spotlight, the existing index will be deleted automatically.

     

      That will force the OS X to create a new index.

     

       When Spotlight indexing is in progress, launch Spotlight and enter a search term next to

     

       the magnifying  glass icon.

     

       At first a pulsating bar and then   a blue progress bar next to “Indexing” will be shown.

  • by inkerrdible,

    inkerrdible inkerrdible Sep 21, 2015 11:46 AM in response to dominic23
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 21, 2015 11:46 AM in response to dominic23

    Now I see what's really eating up my storage. All of it went to "others", does this usually happen to MacBook?
    Anyway, thank you so much!

  • by OGELTHORPE,

    OGELTHORPE OGELTHORPE Sep 21, 2015 12:00 PM in response to inkerrdible
    Level 9 (52,776 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 21, 2015 12:00 PM in response to inkerrdible

    Read this definition of OTHER:

     

    https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202867

     

    There is nothing to be overly alarmed about it.

     

    Ciao.

  • by Linc Davis,

    Linc Davis Linc Davis Sep 21, 2015 6:00 PM in response to inkerrdible
    Level 10 (208,037 points)
    Applications
    Sep 21, 2015 6:00 PM in response to inkerrdible

    For information about the Other category in the Storage display, see this support article. If the display seems to be inaccurate, try rebuilding the Spotlight index.

    Empty the Trash if you haven't already done so. If you use iPhoto, empty its internal Trash first:

              iPhoto ▹ Empty Trash

    In Photos:

              File Show Recently Deleted Delete All

    Do the same in other applications, such as Aperture, that have an internal Trash feature. Then restart the computer. That will temporarily free up some space.

    According to Apple documentation, you need at least 9 GB of available space on the startup volume (as shown in the Finder Info window) for normal operation—not the mythical 10%, 15%, or any other percentage. You also need enough space left over to allow for growth of the data. There is little or no performance advantage to having more available space than the minimum Apple recommends. Available storage space that you'll never use is wasted space.

    When Time Machine backs up a portable Mac, some of the free space will be used to make local snapshots, which are backup copies of recently deleted files. The space occupied by local snapshots is reported as available by the Finder, and should be considered as such. In the Storage display of System Information, local snapshots are shown as Backups. The snapshots are automatically deleted when they expire or when free space falls below a certain level. You ordinarily don't need to, and should not, delete local snapshots yourself. If you followed bad advice to disable local snapshots by running a shell command, you may have ended up with a lot of data in the Other category. Ask for instructions in that case.

    See this support article for some simple ways to free up storage space. A common waste of space is old iTunes backups of mobile devices. As illustrated in this support article, select the Devices tab in the iTunes preferences window, select the backups you want to delete, and click Delete Backups. Keep at least one backup of each device that you still use.

    You can more effectively use a tool such as OmniDiskSweeper (ODS) or GrandPerspective (GP) to explore the volume and find out what's taking up the space. You can also delete files with it, but don't do that unless you're sure that you know what you're deleting and that all data is safely backed up. That means you have multiple backups, not just one. Note that ODS only works with OS X 10.8 or later. If you're running an older OS version, use GP.

    Deleting files inside a photo or iTunes library will corrupt the library. Changes to such a library must be made from within the application that created it. The same goes for Mail files.

    Proceed further only if the problem isn't solved by the above steps.

    ODS or GP can't see the whole filesystem when you run it just by double-clicking; it only sees files that you have permission to read. To see everything, you have to run it as root.

    Back up all data now.

    Install the app in the Applications folder as usual. Quit it if it's running.

    Triple-click anywhere in the corresponding line of text below on this page to select it, then copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.

    For ODS:

    security execute-with-privileges /A*/OmniDiskSweeper.app/*/M*/* 2>&-

    For GP:

    security execute-with-privileges /A*/GrandPerspective.app/*/M*/* 2>&-

    Launch the built-in Terminal application in any of the following ways:

    ☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

    ☞ In the Finder, select Go Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

    ☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.

    Paste into the Terminal window by pressing command-V. You'll be prompted for your login password.

    The application window will open behind other open windows. When you scan a volume, the window will eventually show all files in all folders, sorted by size. It may take a few minutes for the app to finish scanning.

    I don't recommend that you make a habit of doing this. Don't delete anything as root. If something needs to be deleted, make sure you know what it is and how it got there, and then delete it by other, safer, means. When in doubt, leave it alone or ask for guidance.

    When you're done with the app, quit it and also quit Terminal.