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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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Posted on Mar 14, 2017 8:47 AM

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.User uploaded file

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System Storage Taking Up Way Too Much Space in macOS Sierra

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