Stop receiving "Your disk is almost full" notification

Thanks for the question, ngartke. I just find it extremely annoying when people don´t answer the question and instead assume that you need advice to free up more space (ow my god, you´re gonna die!), buy another HD, buy another computer, move to Mars, etc. It´s patronizing and not helpful at all. I´d also like to know the answer, since my 128 GB Mac Air works PERFECTLY fine running with 2 GB of free space. But I´m not running very fine having to turn the **** notification every 10 seconds, and still had to read a lot of very unhelpful answers (not really answers, just opinions in fact). To make myself clear: I don´t want or need opinions, I just need to turn the notification off. Thanks a lot for your comprehension 🙂

After the fact, I see that the:

defaults write com.apple.diskspaced warningInterval 3600

Does not work, at least on Sierra. It did work for a couple hours for me, but then stopped working. So, I spoke too soon...

"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."

but it is not just a warning, when you are very low on space; when the cpu has a lot to do for a moment, the mac can crash. So a timer is not a good idea.

For the LOVE OF GOD please share a way to turn this off. I just can't take this any longer. I have over 7 GB of free memory and I don't need a single extra MB to get on with my life. Just need to kill this notification!

I've been managing for the past 3 years with 1-5 GB of free space and I have no performance issues.

Have you ever run with 10-15 GB of free space to see if performance improves? With the advent of Yosemite, Sierra and High Sierra free space seems to have become more important.

The fact that you have run for the past 3 years with that amount of free space is like saying you've been driving for 3 years without using the seat belt. But what happens when you need it.

You could get into a situation where you copy a large enough file to your hard drive that will essentially fill up the available space and you will be unable to run or reboot. We're here to tell you of the consequences of your actions. If you prefer to ignore the advice it's on you.

Hey guys and gals. I have this same notification problem. Just started happening with High Sierra 10.13 on my rig. I have 75gb. free. That's GIGABYTE not MEGABYTE. 😉

I'm guessing bug... that hopefully will get fixed with the next update pushed.

...or maybe its the Russians! Seriously! When this kind of nonsense happens, call me crazy but, admittedly;

I right away get suspicious of bad actors.

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.

"without any serious performance degradation"

It is not so much about the performance. It is about the "wear levelling" that is in modern SSD controllers. This is about lifetime pf the ssd. The more free space the longer the lifetime, and the less loss of living "cells".

Thanks so much - that made my day. We were invited by another Munich native (I met her many years ago here), her extended family and some in laws (from Poland) which made for some very interesting conversations..

woyciesjes wrote:

Wrong John. This warning can be safely ignored when it's coming up and you have over 10GB of free space. That is more than enough free space for OSX.

Actually, macOS will run with zero GB of free space. In fact, it will run with zero bytes of free space. Not one single solitary byte. I used a Mac for a full week that way. It was perfectly safe. It didn't blow up or anything. It kept complaining, but it kept working, and just as fast as it always did.

Unfortunately I don't have any screenshots to prove it, because with zero bytes available there is nothing left to save a screenshot.

I did, however, take a photograph:

If you continue to ignore that warning, the Mac will eventually not boot at all, leaving you with no option other than to erase it. By that time macOS will have exhausted every available option to reclaim space so that it can continue to work normally.

That's why I wrote:

When that message appears, it should not be ignored. The only way to stop it from appearing is to increase available storage space so that your Mac can continue to work normally. To learn how to do that please read macOS Sierra: Increase disk space.

It remains just as applicable today.

HSierra uses "local snapshots" for safety (not the same as TM does)- as long there is free space....

Using an (almost) full SSD is possible, but just only for the Apple SSD (with Trim), don't ever do that to a third party SSD, because that will shorten the lifetime (purpose of wear levelling) very fast. The Apple changes in the SSD controller are there to make the "prescription" for OS the same as for HDD (8GB free) but in fact shortens the SSD lifetime (but it is generally more lifetime than a HDD): this method was perhaps acceptable for the early OSXs, but is not preferable anymore.

I know the thread is a year old, but I am getting the "Your disk is almost full" alert and I have 120 GB free on a 500 GB drive. That seems really like it is an excessive warning!

Any new info on this issue?

I don't know if the answer has been updated. But apple are wrong to recommend the answer. This is a problem that is not a problem, in my experience. Indeed it is useful if there is little space. But the answer that comes (in my case) does not show the correct figure. Time and again the machine has to be restarted and then the true figure is shown. I don't believe I nor the person who asked the question are unique in this.

I have the same problem, except I have 22 GB available on a 250 GB drive. Seeing the message every 10 seconds and blocking other content is insanely annoying. So like the original post says, there has to be away to turn this off.

I'm getting this message constantly, like every few minutes. I have freed up over 129 gb on a 512 SSD. Yet, I still get the message. When I use Disk Utility I am told that I have only 680 mb free.

The full message I get on the pop up is:

Your disk is almost full

Save space by optimizing storage

There are two choices given, Close and Manage. When I click on Manage it shows my 129 gb fee.

This is driving me nuts.