System Storage Taking Up Way Too Much Space in macOS Sierra

Ladies and gentlemen,

I was on the phone with support. Try this...

1. Start your mac in Safe mode by holding the shift key before the power key

2. Check your storage About This Mac/Storage etc. (In safe mode, mine showed accurate usage)

3. Restart in normal mode

4. Repeat step #2.

All was fixed. Good luck!

Same here! I have a separate iTunes tab and it says 0 KB, but with iTunes open it says I have around 32 MB of music files saved... Reallyyyyy wish I could see the breakdown of the System files, I have no idea what's taking up the 70 GB.

HERE IS HOW TO FIX THIS!!!

• Open terminal using spotlight search.
• Type the following.... sudo tmutil listlocalsnapshots /
• Enter your account password
• Then you will see something like this... com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-12-29-064147
• Next, type... tmutil deletelocalsnapshots and copy the last part of your com.apple.TimeMachine code from earlier. (the numbers.) mine were 2017-12-29-064147
• So in my case, it would look like this.... tmutil deletelocalsnapshots 2017-12-29-064147
• This cleared my storage from 127GB to 1.2GB!!!

Hope this works for you. 🙂

Also visit this youtube video if you can't figure it out.

How to Clear System Storage on MacOS High Sierra - YouTube

I cannot find the comment on how to delete the hidden Adobe cache file. Will you please tell me where to find it?

My ios system uses 342.97 GB and is growing. I use adobe photoshop and premier video editing so I may have lots of adobe cache files hidden.

Thank you!

P.S. I'm in Oregon too 🙂

I had the same issue. After some digging, I found out that '/cores' folder is taking up all the space(110G !!).

The whole purpose of that folder is to send in crash reports to Apple.

Adding in some relevant conversations:

Is it safe to delete core dump files from Mac?

macos - OS X El-Capitan - /cores directory taking up a lot of space? - Ask Different

If it really is taking up a lot of space and you wouldn't want that:

1. Use this command to free up space.

sudo rm -f /cores/core.*

2. Command to prevent future occurances

sudo launchctl limit core 0 0

Final Remarks I just think this is too poor service from Apple allowing to eat up all the users' disk space just for development purposes.

Don't rely on that method to get the actual size of the system folder. I get 31 GB as my system size but the folder itself is only 13 GB when selecting it and using the Get Info on it.

but the folder itself is only 13 GB when selecting it and using Get Info on it.

The method with the higher number is known to be either very inefficient or includes files elsewhere on the hard drive that are associated with the system.

So when you want to know sizes use the Get Info method.

You have to take into account all the other files on your Mac, not just iTunes.

For example the text messages on my iPhone determine the size of the backup my iPhone does on the cloud.

You need to look into how many notes you have and how many text you sent on the macbook. iTunes isn't the only thing taking up space in the system storage tab. It would also be easier for us to help if you submitted a screenshot of the actual Documents>iTunes folder so we can see the size of the folder. That will give us all the info we need to determine the issue. My library is taking up space on my MacBook Air mainly because I use Apple Music and the library takes up space if I use it on my MacBook. Some files are stored on the mac. When I went to my iTunes Music folder in Finder I found what was taking up all the space. It was a movie I purchased on my MacBook Air. One movie was taking up 7GB of data. Go into iTunes and find the movie then select remove download and you can see in the iTunes folder in finder where the folder was removed and the space is now back when I go to System Information. I can delete it and still watch it on all my devices because of the purchase history option. Now what is taking up all the space is a folder titled Album Artwork.

My iTunes Library on my iMac is 4,185 albums, 176 days, 435.37GB so I'd say I'm doing great for having that available on my MacBook Air anytime I want and the System Storage is only now 35.1GB.

Do some digging around in Finder and I'm sure you will find the file(s) taking up all your space. Till then submit the screenshot with more info on the breakdown of the files within iTunes and I'll be able to tell you where to look next. There are a lot of folders you will need to look into if iTunes is not the issue. For instance you will have to go into your Caches folder and see what is in there. There is a lot that can be done, but I don't want to list them all here and misdirect you when you probably don't need to go into these folders.

I just got off the phone with Apple support (highly recommend opening a case with them so they can work with you via phone/screenshare to troubleshoot exactly what is taking up all that storage).

In my case, the Mail app was connected to 3 Gmail accounts. We found that I had "Log Connection Activity" checked off, which was creating massive amounts of log data over the past few years. The Apple specialist had me uncheck that and helped me delete 50 GB of log files. Back in business!

Hope this helps others, but in case your system storage issue is not due to old gmail logs (could be some other app), definitely contact Apple Support so they can help identify exactly what is taking up all that storage. I wish I wouldn't have wasted hours and hours searching online forums, when in less than an hour the Apple Specialist cleared up my issue over the phone!

I've just had to delete my entire portfolio and asset folder from my mac and place in cloud storage to free enough space to use this, thanks to my system files. Why can I not view it to even confirm they are indeed system files?

You might want to have a look here: https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/50073

Tried out the solution by HevvyD and it worked. Purgeable space is almost nothing and System Files take up only around 30GB.

There are at least two previous posts regarding the same "issue" (if in fact it is one!), but I'm not sure anyone has got to the bottom of it yet.

Why does the system use 150 GB of storage?

Is it normal that "system" takes up 36 gb of storage? What does is contain? Can it be decreased?

From my own experience I've found out that "iTunes" (yes, I seem to have that showing in the left side) only reports size for Apps and Podcasts - my Music which is nearly 70Gb looks as though it's reported under "System" (as you have found) which is currently at 83Gb - can't confirm because as you state it's greyed out, but all the other items on the left are far less in size so "System" seems the only place the machine has found to report my music content.

Furthermore, if I use Finder and add my actual Music size (70Gb) to Macintosh HD System and Library (8Gb + 5Gb) it gives 83Gb (what the greyed out "System" is reporting).

So I've basically given up trying to understand why it's reporting in the way it is - the concern previously was of a bloated System file section, but that doesn't seem to be the case (and Finder proves that), so may be it will all get sorted in a future update!

Do a Get Info on the System > Library.

Next download OmniDiskSweeper. Run on your Macintosh HD.

http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnidisksweeper/

I received different results with all three:

About this Mac > Storage 19.37 GB

Get Info on System > Library 8.08 GB

OmnidiskSweeper System > Library 5.3 GB

This suggests to me that Storage results is way off.

You need to report it to Apple Feedback so it can be logged and put in the queue to be fixed.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

So I was trying to migrate to a new mac. I attempted to migrate a few times with no success. Finally I decided to simply hook an external hard drive to the new machine and copy the files over and then install the software. However I suddenly had hardly any space on my 1tb mac. The system was using half. I spent days on trying to figure it all out. Turned out to be this. Despite deleting the users created when I had tried to migrate my old mac over, I went under the computer and looked under users and found they still were there. I deleted all of the users that had been created in my attempts to migrate, which didn't show up when I went to login to the machine and had to choose a user. This solved my problem. I don't recommend using migrate...wasted over a week trying...each time letting the migrate go for 16 hours or more with no success. Hope this helps someone. 🙂

I have a similar problem, my 'System' size is being reported at over 80GB, but i don't know which non-system files are being reported as system ones. I've checked iTunes, its not that, it must be something else. Need to figure out what it is so i can delete it.

Just tried your suggestion but it has made no difference (thanks for trying anyhow), System at 83Gb before, during Safe Mode (after it recalculated) and finally on reboot - still showing 83Gb!

It's worth noting my issue is not incorrect reporting of disk space usage, but rather what it is being recorded against - if it would stop putting music under System and instead show it under iTunes all would be well.