MacOS Sierra - 50-100GB of system storage??

I searched and searched and found this and it worked.

If you are on High Sierra then… it's TimeMachine fault.

That's the solution that worked for me.

Type this command in you terminal:

sudo tmutil listlocalsnapshots /

to check the snapshots of TimeMachine. You get some strings like these:

com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-10-02-132639 com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-10-02-175507 com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-10-02-200417 com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-10-02-235853 com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-10-03-112713 com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-10-03-112934 com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-10-03-113254

You need this command to delete TimeMachine mess:

tmutil deletelocalsnapshots 2017-09-27-112934

Type a command like this for each of those snapshots and you'll get a great amount of free space!

Check to see if you have connection logging enabled for Mac Mail. I did, and was able to track down over a year's worth of connection logging( basically it records in a text file the details of every time you connect to a mail server and download or send messages). I was using around 145GB in my system storage, but was able to get that down to 39GB after deleting those logs and turning logging off.

To check this, open Mac Mail. Go to Window > Connection Doctor. Once that window opens up, in the bottom right corner there should be a checkbox that says "Log Connection Activity" and a button that says "Show Logs."
Click the button, and it will take you to the folder. Unless you specifically need those for some reason, all of the log files can be deleted, and as I stated, doing so cleared up over 100GB of storage for me.

Hope this help

128GB of storage is quite small, but this doesn't mean 50GB of storage taken from the system is normal.

I reckon there is something in your OS which is filling up the SSD. You said you wiped it clean and installed macOS High Sierra from scratch, didn't you? This means the new OS was basically empty, except for Apple's software.

I would suggest to use apps either like DaisyDisk (extremely user friendly), or OmniDiskSweeper, to check where those files are located and what are they.

Have you got a Time Machine backup enabled? The files might be Time Machine local snapshots.

Otherwise, they could be temporary files. If this is the case, you should simply shut down the computer. Once you start it up again, they might have gone.

Time Machine requires an external drive. Open System Preferences > Time Machine. You can view if it's turned on. I highly suggest you have both a Time Machine and a clone backup.

A LOT of stuff gets included in "System." Notes, reminders, map caches, browser caches and history, SMS, MMS and iMessages, fonts and more all get included in "System." The storage graphic is often wrong. It uses the Spotlight index and when that index gets corrupted the readings are all wrong.

Use Disk Utility to find free space or do a Get Info on your Macintosh HD to find available space.

• Restart in Safe boot mode to clear caches then restart normally.
• Reset Spotlight.

Reset Spotlight in Terminal:

Enter each command followed by <return>

sudo mdutil -a -i off

sudo rm -rf /.Spotlight*

sudo mdutil -a -i on

Depending on the size of your data, this could take some time.

Follow these steps to start up into safe mode.

1. Start or restart your Mac.

2. Immediately after you hear the startup sound, press and hold the Shift key.

3. Release the Shift key when you see the Apple logo appear on the screen.

4. When you get to the login screen, you'll see Safe Boot in red in the top right corner. You don't have to stay in Safe Mode. It's for testing purposes and it clears out certain system caches, amongst other potentially beneficial things. You can either
a. Restart normally
b. Continue to login to test a problem.

More info: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201262

First to gave a few GB space so you can download an app to find large files....

In System Preferences

* Time Machine, turn off Time Machine. This will delete any local Time Machine backups.

* Drag your Macintosh HD to the privacy tab to stop Spotlight and delete all Spotlight cache files.

Empty the Trash

Delete items in Downloads

Open iPhoto > Control (right) clicking on iPhoto’s Trash icon and choosing Empty Trash from the contextual menu.

Open iTunes > Preferences > Devices .... delete all old backups

Free up storage space on your Mac - Apple Support

How to Find Items Based on File Size on a Mac (This works to locate large files and items in all versions of OS X:)

• From the Mac OS X Desktop, open any new Finder window
• Hit Command+F to bring up Search
• Click on “Kind” filter and select “Other”, then select “File Size” from the attribute list
• Click on the second filter and choose “is greater than”
• In the third space, enter the size to search for anything greater than (ex: 100) and choose either MB or GB as the final filter

Now that you have some free space, download OmniDiskSweeper (free)

http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnidisksweeper/

**Show User's Library

The User's Library folder is hidden by default. To unhide: Select the Finder in the Dock. Under Go in the Menu bar > hold down the Option key and you’ll see the Library.

There are several apps that can save to Storage. See this post about local Time Machine backups taking up space.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/solution-reclaim-storage-back-from-system.2 073174/Solution: Reclaim storage back from "System" | MacRumors Forums

Instead of checking free space in “About this Mac” "Storage, check in Disk Utility or in the Finder using Get Info on your drive.

About Time Machine local snapshots - Apple Support

Time Machine in macOS High Sierra stores snapshots on every APFS-formatted, all-flash storage device in your Mac or directly connected to your Mac. Time Machine in earlier macOS versions stores snapshots only on the internal startup disk of Mac notebook computers.

To make sure that you have storage space when you need it, snapshots are stored only on disks that have plenty of free space. When storage space gets low, snapshots are automatically deleted, starting with the oldest. That's why Finder and Get Info windows don't include local snapshots in their calculations of the storage space available on a disk.

I had the same problem, but was not using Time Machine and verified I had no local backups using the command line listed in one of the other replies. My System files were taking up 115 GB of disk space, using High Sierra MacOS 10.13.2. I fixed the problem by installing the free app Dr. Cleaner from the App Store. After launching its, it immediately saw 101 GB in junk files, and cleaned them in less than a minute. Now my System file usage is 14 GB.

branko888 wrote:

I had the same problem, but was not using Time Machine and verified I had no local backups using the command line listed in one of the other replies. My System files were taking up 115 GB of disk space, using High Sierra MacOS 10.13.2. I fixed the problem by installing the free app Dr. Cleaner from the App Store. After launching its, it immediately saw 101 GB in junk files, and cleaned them in less than a minute. Now my System file usage is 14 GB.

Ouch!!! Cleaners are trouble. Here's hoping it doesn't come back to bite you.

It is almost certainly the Time Machine local snapshots as explained in a post above.

You can use the instructions above if you want to clear them - or, better yet, connect your Time Machine backup drive and let the backup work.

Whatever you do, don't fall for any of these "cleaner" applications like "cleanmymac" - they are scams.

I suspect there are some issues with the way the Time Machine snapshots are being stored and removed.

You can delete all local snapshots using this command:

sudo tmutil thinLocalSnapshots / 10000000000 4

You might not see results immediately. Give it time to completely remove.

I found an app called Dr. Cleaner on the App Store and it discovered a Mail log folder that was 130GB in size! It was only log files, nothing more. I feel Apple should include this kind of cleanup functionality into their Storage Management app, there is no reason not to. It's silly that the System node is greyed out where I could see that the system took up 200+GB of space, but there are no options to help you reduce that in Storage Management. That is really weak from Apple in this day and age. Kudos to Dr. Cleaner and similar apps which are at least filling the void in this area. But they are still 3rd party apps and I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling uncomfortable having to use such apps which go through all my files. I'm on MacOS High Sierra.

Karl Snyder wrote:

My friend has a mid-2012 MacBook Pro with a 750GB hard drive. His storage is almost all system. He doesn't use Photos, iTunes or any other storage gobbling apps. just mainly Word. His HDD is so full I can't even install any type of app cleaner to get rid of files. I didn't get a chance to look at all of his system, but something is causing the computer to fill up the HDD. He's running Sierra 10.12.1.

DON'T install any sort of app "cleaner"!

First, do a full backup.

You should look carefully to see what is using so much space.

You can start by restarting in Safe Mode (it will be slow... that is normal), which will clear some system caches - just in case there is a large one around.

Then restart normally, and do a Finder search for large files - for example, you may do it like the image below.

CAREFUL - do not throw away any files unless you know what they are.

Press command-F in the Finder to search, then choose something like this:

Again, don't just take any file and send it to the trash - be careful only to trash files you are sure you don't need.

And then don't forget to empty the trash.

I think I know what it is. Under sharing I found this new option called content caching. That cashes things from your network to speed up downloads. It's not a good idea to use that on laptops. I never turned it on. But try turning it off and see if it helps.

when you go to the apple logo in the top left corner, click on it and then go to 'about this mac' and then go to "storage " and there you will see "manage" button. Please click on that and then you will be able to see that how much storage is each and everything taking...