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

"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..

Drew, 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.

As for the threshold settings for that warning to come up - It's clear that you haven't spent any time under the hood of any Unix, Linux, or DSB based operating system. There is certainly a setting somewhere in one of the system files that tells OSX at what point it should display the warning dialog.

The question is simply which file is that, and how to edit it?

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.

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 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 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.

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.

I felt exactly like the OP. The commentary here made me face the truth, especially the words of one poster: “ Eventually you can lose data or get into an unbootable state” 😳

okay! Im convinvinced. But still annoyed. Im doing my best to make room, seems impossible now. My external harddrives keep breaking on me, ugh. I so need a desk top.

I will say this: hey Apple, make it possible for me to send things up to the cloud/recompress them once ive downloaded them from the cloud/opened them. I DO NOT WANT/NEED STUFF STORED LOCALLY; this is a large part of why I’m payimg for extra cloud storag— to store stuff “up there”, but still these local copies seem to exist and i dont know when or how apple decides to recompress them, but i wish we could just do it and/or not have local copies of certain things at all (There are things I’d like to keep and access but could risk losing and/or wouldn’t mind not having instant access to if that were the price (and others which are important enough that I need extra security). Sigh. Just a constant hassle.

PS: is it bad to “bump” this old thread (if so, why? This had the info on it I needed and I haven’t found anything better)? Sorry if so 🏻♀

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.

Still a problem years later. Apple's preferred answer is infuriating in part because they are not purely worried, they are also trying to upsell cloud storage. The constant notification is more like a ransom note