System Storage Taking Up Way Too Much Space in macOS Sierra

Your welcome, but you might want to keep an eye on those two locations just in case their size gets out of hand again. Still can't figure how diagnostic files can get so big but with iPhone/iPad backups it's all too easy, especially if multiple versions are created for whatever reason.

If you start seeing your iDevice diagnostics (i.e. CrashReporter) increase in size again to the same degree as before you might want to consider restoring your device via iTunes, mainly because the logs on your Mac are initially generated by the iDevise and dumped to the computer during each syncing process. A restore might fix what ever is causing the issues that create said logs, worth a try anyhow.

Regarding iDevice backups, just keep an eye via iTunes Preferences/Devices section, it's all too easy for these to get created, either when updating the device software, restoring or simply when connected and deciding to manually create another backup yourself.

Lastly, try not to go mad and remove everything, having a current backup is important just in case an issue arises and you have to resort to restoring the devise, the backup then allows you to get the device back to how you originally had it setup, some will keep more than one though, just in case the first gets corrupted - having a few logs can just help in trying to trouble shoot issues.

I saw same problem because i use core dump which store core files when an app crash, check under your root folder - /cores, if you see a lot of files, follow the post below:

https://blog.liplex.de/disable-core-file-dumps-on-mac/

just bought a new MacBook, had the same problem. I took about 80GB worth of music, put it into "my documents", then from there dragged the files into iTunes. I noticed iTunes had about 80GB, and my system storage wasn't far off that, so I deleted one song from my documents, and went to see if it would still play on iTunes. it did. so I deleted all my music files from "my documents", and the music still plays on iTunes, and iTunes still says there is about 80GB of music on there.

I had a back up of my music on an external hard drive so I wasn't too worried about losing my music from the laptops storage... id suggest if anyone deletes their files like I did to have a back up. I've cleared up a lot of space from my "system storage", and the files are still playable in iTunes, almost as if all the music files were stored twice, once in "my documents" and once in iTunes... its different to a PC where the files are stored where you store it and only links are made in iTunes to the music files (saving files only once)....hope this helps a few of you

Not sure WHY it's happening but the solution is: Get CLEANMYMAC - free app - it scans all your files to identify extraneous and unnecessary files and it instantly and reliably and very simply gets rid of them. Graphic look of app happens to be great as well.

Diana of Oregon Thank You so much for this suggestion.

My wife does photography and shoot photos that take up a lot of space. She uses our 500 gb macbook to edit these photos....we were always having trouble with not enough space, I used Omnigroup sweeper and discovered over 300gb of photos that were duplicated. we now have plenty of free space, also 15gb of mail that was stored. Thank you again.

Too all the people who tell us to ignore the problem. It’s not just that it looks that the disk is full. With my MacBook working got a pain in the *** and slow, almost impossible to work with .. as if the ssd is almost full. So there has to be more to it.. what helped for me at the end is going back to a time machine backup befor the update to macOS High Sierra.. and now I’m waiting..

The fact that the representation of the storage on your hard drive is wildly in error has nothing to do with system performance.

Download and run Etrecheck. Copy and paste the results into your reply. Etrecheck is a diagnostic tool that was developed by one of the most respected users here in the ASC and recommended by Apple Support to provide a snapshot of the system and help identify the more obvious culprits that can adversely affect a Mac's performance.

I have this problem as well. At first, when I checked my disk space, the system had taken up about 9 GB, then it progressed to 54.13 GB and now, it's at 85.55 GB. I'm gonna take it to an apple store and see what they can do...

#2

This:

When a file gets deleted without any Time Machine backup, MacOS has a feature of a local Time Machine backup, which saves the file into the System section as shown in the About This Mac> Storage. The purgeable space is saved for whenever a local time machine backup needs to occur if in case any file had been deleted accidently from the system by the user. There is a way to disable this local time machine backup. Here are the following steps:

1. Open terminal
2. Type "df -h". This will show you a volume of MobileBackups if it was enabled and if this does apply to your system.
3. To disable your Mobile Backup, type "sudo tmutil disablelocal". When prompted for password then type in your password.
4. Check your Storage and see that the purgeable space has been deleted plus the System section has also shrunk to just contain the OSX.

To enable/re-enable the local Time machine backup:

1. Open Terminal
2. Type "sudo tmutil enablelocal". When prompted for password then type in your password. This will then start making a local time machine backup in the system. This will take a while. If you want a quick backup then type "tmutil snapshot".
3. Check your Storage to see that the backup has been made with minimal amount of purgeable space since the snapshot was made. Note that the system section has also increased at this point too to include the previous backup but this time without the space for the purgeable space reserved for this size.

Hey there,

So basically for me I discovered that once i uninstalled an app (move the app to the trash and then empty) my available storage remained constant. Hence you need to properly uninstall your apps because on a mac it is not completely deleted when you do the normal process of moving it to trash and emptying. So click on your desktop (default finder 'app') and click on go. Then click on Library. There you will have a lot of folders. For me I clicked on the folders: Application scripts and Application Logs. There I saw a lot of folders containing apps/games I had deleted already. So basically I moved these folders to the trash and emptied it. My system storage has cleared up drastically and now I have a couple 100 GB free. This worked out for me so I hope it works for ya'll 🙂 PS also make sure yo uare careful when deleting files from the library as some of them are vital for your system All the best guys!

I want to thank you for freeing up 120gigs on my Mac.... This was the easiest and less intrusive way to free up space. I purchased the Mac Used and had two other owners stuff stored on the hard drive...

Mahalo

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

Mine was using nearly a TB in System. After time with support and much googling, I believe to have resolved it; at least for my case.

If you are using the new file system, APFS, the Time Machine local snapshots show up as used space in system. These should show as purgeable and will automatically clear themselves as needed to clear up space. So far, the only way I found to see these files is using the command 'tmutil listlocalsnapshots' and it doesn't show the sizes. It shows a list of snapshots which each look like com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-12-20-014617. I deleted several of these using a command like this for each 'tmutil deletelocalsnapshots 2017-12-20-014617' and that reduced my used disk space and the disk space in system to what I expected.

This turned out to be from core files on my system.

If it happens to you, delete files from /core:

# Remove core files

sudo rm /core/*

Enter your password if prompted.

It is safe to delete these core files: they are copies of the memory from programs that crashed. They are useful for developers to debug issues.

For good measure, also add the following to your .bashrc or equivalent:

# Limit core files to 10 MB at most

ulimit -c 10000000