System Storage Taking Up Way Too Much Space in macOS Sierra

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.

Before using Clean My Mac see this discussion:

Re: how do i run a clean of my macRe: how do i run a clean of my mac

A quote from this discussion:

DO NOT USE ANY SO CALLED APPS CLAIMING TO "CLEAN", "OPTIMIZE" OR "SPEED UP" YOUR MAC!!!! EVER!!!!

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.

this probably sounds dumb but if i were to delete my users folder which takes up 89gb would that delete all the info off of my laptop? i assume that it wouldYour User's folder contains all your personal data. You have to create another admin user in order to delete your User.

This is not a dumb question, but it does indicate to me that you are a very basic user. A drastic action of deleting a user is not something you would do unless you have a backup of your data.

I'm not seeing a previous post from you that describes your problem. If system storage taking up too much space is your problem, I suggest you ignore this. If you look back over this long discussion you will see that under “About this Mac” > Storage is not a true representation of what is actually on your drive. If the temp files take up too much space, your Mac will delete when it gets low on storage.

If your problem is more complex than system storage, then I suggest you create a new post describing your issue. Post a link to your new post here so we can be sure to follow-up.

Writing an effective Apple Support Communities question

I had the same problem and after trying endless solutions, including all of the ones posted in this thread (p.s. thanks to everyone across all the threads trying to help solve this problem), and ultimately the only thing that worked was doing a clean install of the new OS.

In case you're still searching for an answer, or in case someone else with this problem comes upon this thread, I posted a more detailed update regarding what ultimately worked over in my thread regarding this hidden space / system storage problem; Re: Cannot find or remove 100+GB of "Hidden Space

Hopefully that helps anyone who hasn't been able to solve this yet with some of the other available solutions.

This was my problem.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7683120?answerId=32683243022#32683243022

Read through 11 pages of replies that basically solved nothing or wanted me to install freemium crap apps. I had over 200GB of .txt log files from Apple Mail logging connections. Are you kidding me!?!? This just kept filling up my drive and filling up my drive. The more I cleaned out files the worse it got.

Apple you can't have a log file take the system down. Please put some kind of limit in place.

I turned off connection logging in Apple Mail and cleaned out the log files. Problem solved.

I have the same problem, but my "System storage" takes up more space every time I delete something. It's now taking up about 80 GB of storage and thats about 90% of my hard drive, because I have an 128 GB MacBook. I hope there is a solution for this nonsense that is happening with "System storage" taking up most of the space than it should. Look at Windows users, they don't seem to have the problem.

You could try creating a folder on an external drive named Common. Use an alias or Symlink in place of Common folder. See if this saves the cached data to the external drive.

Users>"YourUserName">Library>Application Support>Adobe>Common>Media Cache Files

For easier creation of symlinks, you can add this script http://cl.ly/ImZ5 to "User/Library/Services" and right click on finder items to create symlink.

More info:

How to Create Symbolic Links at Command Line of Mac OS X

https://gigaom.com/2011/04/27/how-to-create-and-use-symlinks-on-a-mac/

I really wouldn't get so caught up in trying to figure out what Apple chucks into the "System" section (and why) because it appears not to be consistent across every user - from what we currently are seeing. I would use Finder with "Get Info" to do a quick check that nothing major is amiss and then forget about it. FWIW my "System" section reports 83Gb which on first look is quite large for what we traditionally think of as the system part of the OS as previously reported via Finder, but if I use "Get Info" I see that the OS System folder is actually 8.07Gb and the Library folder is 4.92Gb - thats 70Gb different, and guess what, my mp3's in the Music folder amount to just that - but Podcasts and Mobile Apps are reported under the iTunes section!

Why this new reporting system for disc space breaks out part of our media and puts some under "System" but the rest still under "iTunes" is a strange one to understand, but as long as everything all adds up why should we worry!

Since my last post Apple has released iTunes 12.6 which for me seems to have resolved the issue of some of my iTunes storage being miss shown under System - not sure which release it was (had two in a couple of days of each other) but now the bar graph and table report sizes for various areas of the OS almost the same as Finder does. So a previous reported System size of 83Gb is now displayed closer to 13Gb, iTunes on the other hand was 6Gb but is now shown as 76Gb which is what iOS apps, podcasts and MP3's add up to.

It might be worth a look to see if the new iTunes install has had a similar change to how System Information reports its information on your setup.

I'll try this. I thought I had the problem solved by deleting Adobe video editing cache files, but unless they're saving somewhere else other than the original place I found them, something is hogging 150 GB of system space 😟

I had a similar problem and I have easily solved it. Maybe my answer might help you.

I've downloaded a program called DaisyDisk which showed me that my System actually takes only 5 GB of the disk space.

Then I've downloaded the OmniDiskSweeper which shows you the files which takes the most space. In my case it was Adobe's Application Support Cache folder. I've deleted this folder and problem has disappeared.

The system is not actually taking up that much storage. It is actually miscategorized. To see if the system is truly taking up that much space:

-go to finder

-select go at the top of the screen

-go to computer

-select "Macintosh HD" (or whatever you have named your Hard Drive)

-command a - select all

-command i - get info on all folders

After the information loads in the top right of each box will be a GB amount. Normally it is the user folder that is taking up all the space.

This one didn't work for me, but something very similar did. I went Control+Shift+G to open the search bar, typed "~/library/", opened "Caches" folder>"Adobe">"Lightroom">"Video">"Media Cache Files" and deleted several 1.2GB+ movie files of movies that I'd previously had and thought I had deleted

This worked for me. Control+Shift+G to open search bar, typed ~/library/ and then >Caches>Adobe>Lightroom>Video>Media Cache Files and deleted several 1.2GB+ movie files of movies that I'd previously had on my Mac and thought I'd deleted