Stop receiving "Your disk is almost full" notification

I agree that the notification telling you disk space is low is warranted, but displaying this every 10-30 seconds is nothing short of intrusive and completely unnecessary. If I choose to browse the internet without any "anti-phishing" or "anti-virus" technology, then let me. If I choose to use my laptop with a 'meagre' 6GB of free space, then again, let me. Warn me about it, sure, but give me an opportunity (say, 7 days), to fix it. Irritating me every few seconds with annoying popups does nothing other than want to make me switch back to Windows... This "helpful" setting really needs an option to be disabled, or at least "postponed" for a period of time (like the OSX upgrade notifications).

Apple, please stop treating people like idiots and actually listen to your customers. I bet if your own engineers had to stop work and click on a "go away" button every minute or so then this behaviour would soon change....

Same problem, only I have 76Gb available on my 250Gb Hard Drive. Seems that in the list of what I must clean up and the only thing I have that makes the list look full is my attached network drive with 6.5Tb of data. Either somehow 76Gb is considered to little space (though I've had this same amount free since pre-Yosemite) or it's calculating my network drives. I should note that I have iTunes library pointing to a partition on this external drive. When I change this via iTunes setting to point to native location, the message goes away, but then I can no longer access my media and iTunes must rebuilt its index.

funkysphere wrote:

When I change this via iTunes setting to point to native location, the message goes away…

You have just proved that it is your external storage not the internal. Check how much free space is on that disk. The OS is warning you because iTunes will fail to work correctly if that disk becomes unwritable because it is full. Data loss is bad m'kay…

indiekiduk2 wrote:

Somebody posted the solution to change the alert settings here but it's been deleted for some reason.

Yup.

Moderators why did the last 'managing diskspaced' post disappear? It looks like spite.

That appeared to be a valid way to set limits & offer some control of this issue, it is better than the suggestions to unload notificationd IMO. If it was harmful at least post explaining why.

Are 'defaults write' commands now considered harmful & not allowed on this site? It seems ridiculous if that is the case.

defaults read com.apple.diskspaced

Here it is! Finally someone saved us from apple… Lol…

Disabling the most annoying message ever created by Apple:

https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/282813

But before you do that, you have to do this:

https://www.howtogeek.com/230424/how-to-disable-system-integrity-protection-on-a -mac-and-why-you-shouldnt/

Regards…

Yes, I know and have seen that thread in Stakexchange. When it is an obvious bug, you can mess with it, but when it is a real message because you are under 10gb for example, make some space free. Keep my remark about SSDs in mind (more free space needed for longevity).

The reminders app is for users - it does not control Mac OS behavior. Therefore, it will not control system based messages. I have all Notifications turned off permanently; but I still received the "not enough space on this disk" pop-up several times yesterday while intentionally trying to fill up an SSD hard drive as much as I could before erasing it.

Came in here to post a link to this and found that someone already did. This answer should be much higher up

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

Here is the full copy from the thread:

The solution to disabling the "almost full" and "full" notification is to disable the daemon responsible for it:

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

Alternatively, if you only want to prevent the "almost full" from appearing so often then you can lower the GB threshold via:

minFreeSpace (int) - minimal free size in GB. Default: 20

The default 20GB is too high for small SSDs and a possible bug causes the alert to be shown every day rather than just once, so as a workaround you can lower the free space before the alert appears, e.g. to 10GB:

defaults write com.apple.diskspaced minFreeSpace 10

The daemon only reads its prefs on startup so you need to restart it if you have system integrity turned off:

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

Otherwise kill it:

killall diskspaced

In case you are interested in the other preferences for these disk alerts you can view some of them using the help param:

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/StorageManagement.framework/Versions/A/Resources/diskspaced help --- Domain: com.apple.diskspaced Supported keys: debugLog (BOOL) - log additional debug information. Default: NO checkAllVolumes (BOOL) - check all volumes. Default: NO minDiskSize (int) - minimal disk size in GB. Default: 128 minFreeSpace (int) - minimal free size in GB. Default: 20 minPurgeableSpace (int) - minimal purgeabe space size in GB. Default: 20 --- Commands: removeAllNotifications - Removes all scheduled and delivered user notificiations.

And here are a couple of hidden ones:

warningInterval (integer default 0) lastWarningDate (string e.g. 2017-05-05 16:48:29 +0000)

I didn't look too closely at but it is possible setting the last warning date to a date in the future would also prevent the alert displaying.

New answers are always displayed last.

I am assuming that you have actually tried this (which is what we are supposed to do according to the ToU)? Terminal commands aren't for everybody, especially when one typo can render your computer inoperable.

Yes, you assumed correctly. I have extended the interval used to show the popup by following the instructions given. I don't mind having the popup display; I just don't want to dismiss it every few seconds

The solution to disabling the "almost full" and "full" notification is to disable the daemon responsible for it:

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

Alternatively, if you only want to prevent the "almost full" from appearing so often then you can lower the GB threshold via:

minFreeSpace (int) - minimal free size in GB. Default: 20

The default 20GB is too high for small SSDs and a possible bug causes the alert to be shown every day rather than just once, so as a workaround you can lower the free space before the alert appears, e.g. to 10GB:

defaults write com.apple.diskspaced minFreeSpace 10

The daemon only reads its prefs on startup so you need to restart it if you have system integrity turned off:

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

Otherwise kill it:

killall diskspaced

In case you are interested in the other preferences for these disk alerts you can view some of them using the help param:

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/StorageManagement.framework/Versions/A/Resources/diskspaced help --- Domain: com.apple.diskspaced Supported keys: debugLog (BOOL) - log additional debug information. Default: NO checkAllVolumes (BOOL) - check all volumes. Default: NO minDiskSize (int) - minimal disk size in GB. Default: 128 minFreeSpace (int) - minimal free size in GB. Default: 20 minPurgeableSpace (int) - minimal purgeabe space size in GB. Default: 20 --- Commands: removeAllNotifications - Removes all scheduled and delivered user notificiations.

And here are a couple of hidden ones:

warningInterval (integer default 0) lastWarningDate (string e.g. 2017-05-05 16:48:29 +0000)

I didn't look too closely at but it is possible setting the last warning date to a date in the future would also prevent the alert displaying.

I stole this answer from 'malhal' here Silencing "Your disk is almost full" notification - Ask Different

It worked for me!

Perfect! Just help me turn it off, I don´t need someone to advice me to free up more space, buy another HD, buy another computer, move to Mars, etc

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?

Free up some space on your drive, it is dangerously low at the moment.