System Storage Taking Up Way Too Much Space in macOS Sierra

I had 114.6 GB of "System" storage, but my computer only had a 256GB SSD, which means that "System" already killed half my computer. Including other work files, the computer was basically full, and the annoying "System is almost full" message keeps popping out. But your trick did work, it cleared about 40 GB, real helpful, thanks!

Same here. I tried watching the TTA vid with David A. Cox but that got me nowhere and I tried to delete some files and got just barely anything done. I am wondering what is causing all this. I would go through Finder and look through the System Files folder although it is grayed out which means I have no access. Ughh, great.

BTW, I tried to use Clean My Mac X but I was only allowed to free up to 500 Megabytes of storage, practically doing nothing. I would use Daisy Disk but you have to pay for that too. I don't want to do the trials because I don't want to get in to that mess of forgetting about the trial ( which has happened to me many of times with other services ) and then having to pay for it, perhaps not working etc. This MacBook I have is from 2015 and it is running Mojave with no problem and runs apps smoothly without much latency so it appearing with this much system storage is crazy to me. So I guess it's not Human Error. And if it's not Human Error then it's Apple's fault. Now I don't want to rant about Apple and the many things that they do wrong but it just seems like it. To add on, they haven't explained why this happens. I even took the problem to a technician from Apple on a phone call and he just said to delete the cache files which did nothing! He suggested that I should delete some of the apps I don't use because there are files that are in the system storage directory. But, here is the catch ... I did that before already and that also did nothing! Maybe because I don't have much downloaded other than 1 game, Google Chrome and Spotify. I tried to disable some apps but that didn't change anything except the fact that it appears it was "removed". Well, I guess that is that and I don't have much to do unless some miracle happens.

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.

I have a similar problem, my 'System' size is being reported at over 80GB, but i don't know which non-system files are being reported as system ones. I've checked iTunes, its not that, it must be something else. Need to figure out what it is so i can delete it.

Just tried your suggestion but it has made no difference (thanks for trying anyhow), System at 83Gb before, during Safe Mode (after it recalculated) and finally on reboot - still showing 83Gb!

It's worth noting my issue is not incorrect reporting of disk space usage, but rather what it is being recorded against - if it would stop putting music under System and instead show it under iTunes all would be well.

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.