Stop receiving "Your disk is almost full" notification

All the "do not ignore this warning" are completely useless. It's entirely up to the user to decide how much space they want to have free on their drive. I have 128GB drive, so having very low free disk space is completely normal for me and I'm using my system without any serious performance degradation.

The best answer to that problem that I have found is here: Silencing "Your disk is almost full" notification - Ask Different

TL;DR:

- disable the daemon that generates the warning:

launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.diskspaced.plist

- lower the limit (to 10 GB in this example):

defaults write com.apple.diskspaced minFreeSpace 10

- kill the daemon:

killall diskspaced

I found you can change the threshold for the warning with a terminal command. Open a new terminal window and type the following command. The integer at the end is the minimum number of free GB before it will warn you about low space, so 10 GB here, set it to whatever you want.

defaults write com.apple.diskspaced minFreeSpace 10

Then run these two commands to reload the daemon (or just restart your mac)

launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.diskspaced.plist
launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.diskspaced.plist

You can also completely disable the warning with this command

launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.diskspaced.plist

Hope this works for you it fixed the issue for me 🙂

Source Silencing "Your disk is almost full" notification - Ask Different

I understand the argument that having low space is not a good practice.

I understand the need for a warning to inform the user that they should address this issue.

I DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHY this warning needs to pop up 5 to 10 seconds after the user dismisses it, every time the user dismisses it.

Sometimes a user is in the middle of something, and 3 Gigs free is okay for the next half hour while they finish an e-mail or something.

THE SOLUTION HERE is simply put the **** thing on a timer, so that it resurfaces after 20 minutes or an hour, rather than after 10 seconds. Having something pop up and remind me every 10 seconds is one of the reasons I switched from Windows to Mac.

To do this, you run:

defaults write com.apple.diskspaced warningInterval 3600

On the command line.

Well, another really quick fix is to switch on the "Do not disturb" of the notifications. That way the notification is silenced.

Of course meanwhile try to fix the space left on your drive... I had the same issue and wanted to be able to work without having to click on this notification each 10s.

As a different approach, altering the system's settings, I found out this resource, which claims to either disable the feature completely (I would not suggest do that), either to set the size you think fits your system+HDD/SDD (as I recall was possible in older Mac OX versions):

Silencing "Your disk is almost full" notification - Ask Different

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/254485/silencing-your-disk-is-almost-f ull-notification

Yet, I would still try the OnyX way first, before altering system's settings!

Hope this helps!

Felix

Hello ngartke (and All with this problem),

Before I tell you what I did to get rid of that annoying notification, let me say that since I installed macOS Sierra in January (2017), I started to get this error almost all the time, first when just ~6GB were free, then at ~2GB, but I also got it when had ~18GB or even ~35GB free (out of my 500GB HDD), which is REALLY ANNOYING!

And, as I can understand this reason (for at minimum of 2GB free), I don't see a point for not being able to SET THE DESIRED SIZE of the free space available for the notification to come up, as was in older Mac OS versions.

Also, I noticed that the "System" part of the Storage Management (the app that shows what space is using each of the computer "parts", let's say it so), is varying A LOT, from a normal 18-20GB to the double and most annoying ~45GB used.

Now, as a solution, I found out that, sometimes, just restarting the computer could free up that "System" part, and from 40GB (f.e.) if you make it half (as I think is normal), then you just got yourself 20GB additional free space.

And since this "restart trick" does not work all the time, I found out that using OnyX (https://www.titanium-software.fr/en/onyx.html - for the specific version of Mac OS is installed), then, here among many-many other functions, I have also the option to clear cache of several “parts” of the OS, including System, User, Internet, Fonts, and Logs, which most of the time leads to a great deal of free space freed up.

Please be aware that while you do those cleanings, you do not need to restart the computer after each of them, just after the last one.

Hope this will help you too, as was helped me several times by now!

Felix

P.S. If the system here will remove my above link, just search the web with "OnyX download mac" and you should find the OFFICIAL one on the producer site, Titanium Software.

How to stop receiving "Your disk is almost full" notifications

1. Boot to Recovery OS by restarting your machine and holding down the Command and R keys at startup.
2. Launch Terminal from the Utilities menu.
3. Enter the following command:

   $ csrutil disable

4. After enabling or disabling System Integrity Protection on a machine, a reboot is required.
5. Boot into your account.
6. Launch Terminal from the Utilities menu.
7. Enter the following command: launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.notificationcenterui.plist
8. Reboot to Recovery OS by restarting your machine and holding down the Command and R keys at startup.
9. Launch Terminal from the Utilities menu.
10. Enter the following command:

    $ csrutil enable

11. After enabling System Integrity Protection on a machine, a reboot is required.
12. Boot into your account.
13. Done. Disk space warning has now been disabled and System Integrity Protection is still functional.

I don't know if I shared how I got my problem fixed. I found advice from someone suggesting that doing a new save on Time Machine would fix my problem. My problem was that I kept showing purgeable space even though I had erased dozens of gigs of space. It still filled space and I kept getting the message. Time Machine purged the purgeable. Problem solved.

toggling on do not disturb on my macbook did the trick!

7 GB on a hard drive is like driving your car with a cup of gasoline. Your OS needs space to operate. Every action you take (add, delete, type, activities online, etc, etc) requires the OS to read and/or write to disk. In order to write, it needs space (although sometimes temporary) continuously. So, your hard drive isn't just "storage", it is THE working component on your computer.

Therefore, if you maintain enough empty hard drive space, you will not get the message. It is that simple.

FWIW, iOS devices have a different OS management system, so it operates somewhat differently.

Ajaba wrote:

13. Done. Disk space warning has now been disabled and System Integrity Protection is still functional.

That is not accurate - you are disabling notification centre not just the disk space warning. Some people might actually want notifications from Mail, Messages or other apps.

Earlier in this thread there are other system modifying 'hacks' that allow notifications to work but seem to alter the notification from the disk space checking process, that could be a better option.

when this warning is coming up on systems that have 10+ GB free space; then it is the warning system that is wrong. OSX can work just fine with as little as 1 or 2 GB of free space, regardless of what Apple says.

Of course it can - you can try to use it with only 500 MB remaining. Does that mean it is recommended or good for your spinning hard drive or SSD's performance?

No.

Here is an ad hoc collection of articles/discussions/advice on the matter:

http://www.overclock.net/t/1621036/how-much-space-do-you-leave-free-in-your-ssd

https://www.howtogeek.com/325537/how-much-free-space-should-you-have-on-your-iph one

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-3148404/ssd-require-leave-free-space.html

https://www.quora.com/How-much-space-is-it-good-leave-in-a-256-SSD-in-a-MacBook- Pro-retina

https://www.lifewire.com/how-much-free-drive-space-needed-2260187

The fact is that any hard drive or SSD will perform better if it has plenty of empty space. In fact, if you work with rendering/editing videos/graphics extensively, you should have - as a minimum - at least as much empty space as you have temp. files in your project. I can easily amass 100 - 150 GB minimum in a one hour HD project so I usually keep at least 200 GB of free space.

I got tired of waiting for a fix for this, so got Disk Inventory X. Has helped me find what's consuming space. Most times i've seen it's files that are not needed. At one time recovered almost 10GB of space from files called "iNodexxx" then another called "swapfile0". Just to be safe I kept them on my external hard drive just in case they turned out to be needed but since October 2017, have not needed them and of cause from online feedback.

Am not sure if it will help but just thought to mention. That notification almost drove me bunkers. Good luck.

This is not an opinion: there is no safe way to turn it off.

Just a heads up (not an opinion either, just facts):

Once your Mac refuses to boot up, crashes inexplicably, and/or winds up with one kernel panic after another and you request help in these forums, do not forget to mention that you prefer to run your OS without the required "headroom" (storage space). Or, simply don't bother asking for help since you will get more advice to free up space - which, as we all know now, is not what you want to hear.

FWIW, no one here has been patronizing; they have all attempted to be helpful.

Good luck; I am done here.

I know you don't want to hear this, but you've been really lucky so far in running your Mac with this little spare disk space - very, very, very lucky.

I don't normally post on communities, but your situation compelled me to post - this will only get worse unless you do something about your low disk space right now - today.

Clear out your Mac, use the new tools in Sierra to free up space, buy another HD and transfer some files over - whatever, you've got to do something.

The main point is that anyone who tries to help you in turning this notification off would be doing you a disservice.

If your car had a warning light flashing, you would ask the garage to fix the problem, not 'turn the annoying light off'.

If you don't do something then at some point you will be back on these forums asking people why your Mac is starting up with a 'stop sign' and not booting.

If you still think you're right (you are not), then it's your (Mac's) funeral.