System Storage Taking Up Way Too Much Space in macOS Sierra

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.

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

(Continued) if you are using time machine, you can verify without turning time machine off by deleting a few of those local snapshots as described in my post above. Delete a couple of them from a time just after when you made a big change like moving photos and see what it shows.

I had this problem too. But I was able to solve it by going into ~/Library/Containers/ then searching for users and deleting a user file from a previous deleted account. That user file was 36GB and was eating up a lot of my storage. I had created this user earlier and then deleted it but with the option of keeping the user's dmg file on my mac.

I fixed mine (System storage eating 130GB) by deleting 2 ICloud Archive folders and an extra Desktop folder. I suspected something had happened when I'd clawed back files from iCloud six months ago after realizing I couldn't work offline. I thought I'd stopped the iCloud crap, but realized that files were still being saved to iCloud archive folders, though not being uploaded to iCloud. Then there was this weird extra desktop folder I found. I moved them to trash and my system storage went to less than 40GB with 106GB in the trash. Nearly pressed empty trash then - but be cautious.

It was harrowing, because it was confusing about which files were in my reg folders and which were in the iCloud folders I wanted to delete. It did not help that the folders in the trash bizarrely still showed up on the Finder window margin. I thought those folders were kept and nearly Emptied Trash - but those folders were actually in the trash. Be cautious and look for "trash" written inconspicuously on a grey bar in the finder window when you click on the left margin folders to view the files. I carefully moved files around into different folders then pressed empty trash. Currently the system storage reads 29GB. Success.

Deeper info: When I did Command I on the icloud a archives and extra desktop folders, they were nothing - nothing could explain the huge system storage load. But one or more of those folders was doing something on a system level that sucked my GB dry. I suspect it was that extra desktop folder that I think was generated while I took back my folders from cloud. I removed the archive icloud folders from trash to test what it did to system storage before I deleted them forever. Putting them on my desktop did nothing really to system storage. However the extra desktop folder couldn't be removed from trash to test it's GB burden ("do you want to replace the existing desktop?"). I said F it , put back the Archive icloud folders into trash and deleted the them all. Went from system storage using 130 GB to 29 GB in that instant.

(I'd dealt with Apple Support 3 times, BTW. I deleted timemachine snapshots, I turned off timemachine, I didsome otherstuff they told me to do which was PAINFUL and did so, so, so little. Still had 130GB system storage).

What fixed this was my intuition and anger: I figured it out. I hope this helps someone else.

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!

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 found the answer to my question using DaisyDisk app (trial version) on my Mac to analyse the disk usage. For those wondering why there's some hidden space: this is the OS design (High Sierra).

-> in my case it was related to my IOS back up, a part of it is hidden by High Sierra and not showing in the library, they remain hidden.

From DaisyDisk:

Note #1 This hidden space is taken by Time Machine’s local snapshots, which typically pile up until they take ~80% of available disk space. If you happen to need more space, or after you back up your Mac to a permanent storage, the temporary backups are automatically removed by macOS and the disk space is reclaimed.

In previous versions of macOS, the local snapshots were found in the hidden /.MobileBackups folder, which could be revealed by scanning as administrator in DaisyDisk. By contrast, the new Apple’s APFS file system in High Sierra stores the snapshots outside of any user accessible area, so they remain hidden.

Usually, no action is required regarding the local snapshots. You can use tmutil command in Terminal to manage the snapshots, but even if you delete them, they will reappear again. Only if you turn off Time Machine they will stop appearing, but it doesn’t seem like a good idea. So basically you just ignore them.

Also note that whenever you delete a file on APFS, its space doesn’t get immediately reclaimed, because all changes are captured by the snapshots.

Note #2 The other source of hidden space on APFS are other volumes. Unlike the previous HFS file system, in APFS all volumes share free space within the parent “APFS container”, like folders on a disk. You can see this hidden space as “other volumes” in About This Mac or in Disk Utility. Note that even if you don’t create additional volumes yourself, there can be hidden small volumes used by macOS itself.

I had an incredible 400GB used by the System with only 67GB free on my 750GB drive. This was aggravating, as I had been moving data off to my backup drive as well as deleting stuff left-and-right. All my hard work was going to "the System". A little sleuthing pointed to TimeMachine as a potential issue. I plugged in my backup drive, started TimeMachine backup and it immediately jumped to 237GB freeing up a ton of space. There is an article on how-to-geek that has more you can do at the shell to clean up TimeMachine even more. Link: How to Free Up Space Used By Time Machine’s Local Backups on Your Mac

I had more that 320 Gb of system size, thus I opened the Terminal and entered the Library folder:

cd /Users/your_username/Library/

Then listed folder usage:

du -d1 -h

And found that Containers and Developer folders where using more than 200 Gb of space.

Now you can enter each folder and repeat listing disk usage and nail down the application is using all that space

Its up to you to understand if you can clean up or not the data depending on which app is using your space; in my situation I had a docker image and many archives I could delete.

Bests,

Josef ***
[Personal Information Edited by Host]

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 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.

I found out what takes my storage. I recently install Microsoft Out look on my Mac. It creates a huge back up in my local SSD. I found this by using OmiiDiskSweeper. Download OmniDiskSweeper and analyze your hard drive

I had tried migrating my old Mac unsuccessfully several times. I deleted the users and tried again. Turns out when I went under users, that there were still 4 versions of the user there. I deleted them and it removed 200gb. I'd check with someone to see if this will cause you issues, but it was definitely my problem with the huge system size.

I had a hidden file in Application Support file taking up around 50Gb but was listed as System Storage . It was associated with another User profile on my MacBook that I deleted (maybe why the file was hidden even to the admin profile?). Helpful lil app called OmniDiskSweeper found it for me and I could delete it thereafter. Really reccomend it.