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System Storage Taking Up Way Too Much Space in macOS Sierra

I've encountered a problem on my brand new MacBook, but haven't been able to find a solution after working on it for most of today. In a nutshell: When I go to "About This Mac > Storage" the System files were taking up a whopping 90+ GB of my hard drive. Here is a screen shot:

User uploaded file

I also noticed that, unlike on my wife's MacBook Pro, I had no individual listing for iTunes. I could reach the iTunes folder through Documents on the left side, but the contents of the folder were grayed out. As an experiment, I copied then deleted my entire iTunes Library from within iTunes. After I did that, my Storage report looked like this:

User uploaded file

Now the System files are down around 8 GB. (The Documents content jumped up dramatically because I copied my iTunes Library to the Desktop.) Unfortunately, I haven't found a way to establish the separate entry for iTunes in this window. When I move things back into iTunes, they count again toward the System storage amount. And I still don't have a separate iTunes entry.


I would like to be a huge fan of Optimized Storage, but this set-up of counting iTunes media as "system files" seems problematic. And I have no idea why it reports storage content accurately on my wife's Mac but not mine. Unfortunately Apple Support was not very helpful when I contacted them this afternoon. The agent suggested reinstalling macOS Sierra, which I did, but it didn't solve the problem. Some help would be appreciated, Apple!

MacBook (Retina, 12-inch, Early 2016), macOS Sierra (10.12)

Posted on Sep 25, 2016 1:24 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Dec 12, 2016 12:08 PM

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!

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System Storage Taking Up Way Too Much Space in macOS Sierra

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