System Storage Taking Up Way Too Much Space in macOS Sierra

The "System" category appears to be including sandboxed application data, which is stored in ~/Library/Containers/.

I used About This Mac | Storage | Review Files | File Browser to navigate to the folders/files using the most space and found that Docker was growing a file called Docker.qcow2 indefinitely in ~/Library/Containers/. Deleting the file released 30GB from "System" while "Documents" stayed the same size.

Check your Users folder. Even though I had removed users in System Preferences, I discovered there was still folders for past users stored on my mac. I deleted the extra User folders and About This Mac > Storage updated to the correct info.

Here's how I was able to solve this issue:

- Using the Disk Daisy (https://daisydiskapp.com/) trial version allowed me to pinpoint which directory was causing the issue

- In my case, it was the .DocumentRevisions-V100directory which is where Sketch dumps older versions of your documents

- I followed the steps outlined on this post: (https://medium.com/sketch-app-sources/sketch-can-unknowingly-take-way-too-much-h ard-drive-space-here-s-how-to-fix-it-1979e976f2d6#.libhod8u4) and Voila! Solved!

*Keep in mind that even if you aren't a Sketch user, these steps might still help you. Good luck!

I found how to purge half of the system on my mac.

I downloaded OmniDiskSweeper which I accessed and I found that under a folder called fsCached Data, there was about 60GB of cached data. I deleted all of it, which was about 200,000 items and it immediately fixed my system problem, which was originally 87GB. It has dropped down to 27GB now with that.

I don't think this will solve your iTunes issue, but I've had a similar issue on two Mac machines, both from the same source: Adobe cache files. On my newer Sierra Macbook the "System" storage was reporting as 186Gb on my 250Gb SSD. Now that I've fixed it "System" is less than 20 Gb.

OmniDiskSweeper is a great tool for this, although there are other ways to fix it.

(Be sure you get Version 1.9 or later. The first time I tried, I went to the wrong source and got an earlier version, which didn't work on Sierra.)

Look at the following path: Users>"YourUserName">Library>Application Support>Adobe>Common>Media Cache Files. Delete everything in this folder.

In my case, this folder contained full copies of every video that had ever been on the machine. Plus, if I had renamed the video, say from "Beach1" to "Beach2", it had full copies with both names. It has additional smaller files for each video, and it may be caching image files as well, although I didn't look at every file.

This is especially weird since I copy newly shot videos from the camera card to the laptop in the field (so I can look at them quickly with Flip Player.) I do not ever edit video on this machine, or open video with any Adobe editing product. I do have Bridge, which makes thumbnails of the videos if I happen to use it to look at that folder.

I had the same problem a year or two ago on an earlier machine, fixed it, and I thought Adobe had fixed the bug. But apparently not.

Here is the type of screenshot we need from you to determine if it is iTunes taking up all the System Storage space and why.

I noticed when I remove more files to try and shrink the size of the system storage file it just makes the file get bigger. It does not decrease in size by simple removing files. I will write back with the results after I do a safe boot and restart the computer to see where the system storage level is at.

This worked. Thanks!

I had almost 250 GB of Adobe video editing cache files that it saves automatically on my laptop, even though I intentionally save all the rest of the vids and data on my external.

Finally, my macbook has free space again. Thank you so much!

I figured it out based on a bunch of other comments. And yes, I deleted almost 250 GB of adobe media cache files from editing videos! ... I couldn't figure out how to delete my comment to you, so hopefully you'll see this.

Thanks!

Here is my screenshot of how my drive looks today. I wished you posted the disk info like this instead so we can see the issue you are having better. That being said my disk is showing that around 50% of the disk is being taken up by the System files.

I know Apple advertises these laptop hard drives as not for longtime use, but not being able to use 50% of the drive is ridiculous.

Generally any logs under Users/Library/Logs can be safely deleted but normally it's not necessary or desirable because they take up so little space (mines currently 21.8MB), and don't forget they can be useful when trying to troubleshoot issues (that's one reason why they are generated). The "random" numbered iPhone folder is I believe left behind when you rename your device (say following a Restore) which then generates a new one with that name, or you previously had given your device a unique name but again following a Restore you leave it with it's default name (think I have that the right way round).

Anyhow, you can delete one or both because next time you sync the iPhone via iTunes a new folder will get generated - the question I would be concerned with is why are those folders so large, 70Gb is a lot for basically text files!

One word of caution, although it's generally safe to remove logs from the User Library (~/Library) either via Finder or the Console App you want to stay away from doing anything similar in either Macintosh HD/Library or Macintosh HD/System/Library folders.

ps. Just a thought, but if you have more than one iPhone log folder have you checked on how many iPhone BackUps you have - open iTunes then from main menu, iTunes/Preferences... then select Devices

Check this out - ***?!

Upgraded to 1TB MacBook about a month ago - started with about 470GB, and all of a sudden the computer is almost out of storage. Help? Have no idea what to do and don't want to risk losing anything. 750GB system file is nuts.

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.