How to get back or remove purgeable space.

The articles commonly cited and recommended by Apple make a claim that doesn't seem to be substantiated by reality. For example yes you can store photos and documents in the cloud but it fails to purge them from the local hard drive. So when you see 'purgeable' space on your disk yes maybe that is true but it in practice does not actually get purged (and there is no way to invoke this manually). So they may as well label the space as 'photos' and/or 'documents' since it is not really usable space. In the end one is just as limited by a 256gb SDD as they were before this feature arrived (e.g. Unable to download or create new files due to a full disk despite having 100gb 'purgeable' space). Somebody please prove me wrong.

No fun, I am out of space...Google Drive isn't operable as I have run out of space.

From what I read, purgeable space is only usable when I commensurate amount of space is available using iCloud, something I do not accept.

If Apple is forcing my hand and I have to read forums to address technical issues then Apple is no longer the Apple I loved.

Regrettably, a suggestion to disable Time Machine local snapshots has recently been posted to this Discussion.

I strongly recommend that you reject that suggestion as inappropriate. Not only is it completely unrelated to the problem you describe, local snapshots are not included in any available space calculations, and are automatically terminated and removed when additional space is required, as are certain other files normally generated by macOS.

About Time Machine local snapshots - Apple Support

stellamaris5 wrote:

However, there have been several reports in the developer forums of people asking to get rid of the 'Purgeable Space' - how do you do it?

Barney-15E provided the applicable Apple Support documents explaining how it works. Local Snapshots are included in its calculations.

It's supposed to be automatic and not something you need to worry about, though there are occasions in which you might want to disable or exclude certain items from "Optimize Storage": How to use pro apps with Optimized Storage - Apple Support.

Apple could probably explain things a little better. The following link may help explain some of the uncertainty regarding Purgeable Space:

http://blog.macsales.com/39247-rocket-yard-guide-what-is-purgeable-space-in-maco s

It directly answers your questions (edited for the sake of brevity):

Can I Delete Purgeable Files Myself?

Not easily.

Can I Prevent a File From Being Marked Purgeable?

Not directly.

John, thanks for the heads up , I've now enabled local snapshots again as it is not an issue for me.

However, there have been several reports in the developer forums of people asking to get rid of the 'Purgeable Space' - how do you do it?

It prevents them form creating large files stating that there is no space available on disk when in some instances the purgable space is 100Gb

If you have TimeMachine enabled it might be that local snap shots are the issue. Generally when the backups are successfully completed, the OS will delete the local snapshots. I have seen a delay in this which causes the local snapshots to remain.

An option is to disable local snapshots but know that this will delete any TimeMachine local backups created between TM backups. It not delete any files other than the backups that have not been written to TimeMachine.

The command to disable snapshots is:

* sudo tmutil disablelocal * and must be run from a terminal session. It will also prompt for an admin password.

Next you do * sudo tmutil enablelocal * to renable use

Hope it helps !

This worked for me - had about 140GB of 'purgeable' space and only 34GB of free space - made sure I had plugged in external drive to ensure I had all local backups actually backed up, then used those two commands in terminal. Success! Now I can use my mac again.

Thanks lolofo777

I've had this issue this evening when trying to install a program that didn't recognize purgeable space as available space and complained that I didn't have enough space on my computer despite copious amounts of it... BUT I FIXED IT

I found a way to circumvent the whole purgeable space issue by letting the OS do it for you. Unfortunately there's no dedicated process or app for this. Instead, I duplicated my very large 50GB photo library three times. When the copies were made, the OS automatically purged the reserved space and dedicated 150GB to three extra copies of my photo-library. All I had to do then is to delete the library copies to the trash bin and then empty the trash. Voila! all the previously "purgeable" space was now free space and the program I was trying to install installed without a hitch.

While this method is indirect and rather awkward, it should work rather well. Any file duplicate should work to overwrite the purgeable space via the OS copy and paste duplication.

Hope this helps!

Unfortunately there's no way to free purgeable space. Apple wants the OS to automatically take care of that for you when one runs into low free space. Similar to the way Apple TV 4 handles its storage. Apple doesn't even provide info in settings on the ATV4 to tell you how much free space you have. There is an app called tvStorageinfo which solves that problem.

Their goal is to get people to use the space optimization features, iCloud Drive/storage and not worry so much about actively managing storage. This is frustrating for me, as a former Windows user, where I would go through hidden folders (Localapp) and the System/System32 folders freeing up every single MB possible. This is just not how MacOS works and I have finally just accepted it. You can actually easily break your MacOS install by messing around too much with the system-wide system folder on the HD. You can utilize disk cleaners to get rid of some rubbish but for the most part you either have to use cloud storage and/or what I prefer, external storage which is really cheap nowadays and with USB-C (specifically USB 3.0 gen 1) file transfer speeds are more than adequate. Although my USB-C ports have gen 2 capability, I don't have any peripherals that take advantage of those speeds. I think right now only monitors use that bandwidth. USB 3.1 SSDs are the fastest available and it will take years before we see any drives taking advantage of 3.1 gen 2 's theoretical 10 Gb/s (1250MB) bandwidth. Currently they max out at 480MB/s or 3.84 Gb/s which is under the theoretical max of 5 Gb/s for both USB 3.0 and way under that of 3.1 gen 1 which shares the same theoretical max as TB1.

So we are very far away from seeing drives take advantage of even the old TB1 standard. Imagine how long it will take to get anywhere near to TB2 or TB3 speeds. As of now it's really only of benefit for connecting several 4-5K monitors and maximizing the transfer speeds of external SSD drives, or high speed p2p networking.

If only...

This is a fantastic feature in theory, and is the way of the future, but in macOS Sierra it simply does not work reliably. My hard drive, for example, shows around 250 GB of 499 GB available. Unfortunately, the vast majority of that available space is “purgeable“ content.

Just yesterday I tried copying about 40 GB of RAW files off my CF card from a shoot for some quick editing, and sure enough it failed with the dreaded “not enough space available” message. I personally had to dig around and come up with enough items (roughly 30 GB worth) to delete manually in order to copy over the RAW images. It kind of makes the “optimize space“ option pointless.

I can’t wait till this tech works properly, but for now I regard macOS’s stated “available space” like a Trump claim.

The time machine uses purge as well as sending that data to the backup

Easy fix to clear purged data is to turn TimeMachine off and back on releasing the purged info

-System Preferences / TimeMachine -- Turn off Back up Automatically go to HD and select get info to be sure purge has cleared and then switch TimeMachine back to Back up Automatically

You don't have to live with the mess of ransom storage, no thanks to Apple. In few steps you can reduce your purgeable space to a lot less than 500MB. I wrote a short article on it here: https://medium.com/@olatunjee/tips-to-free-up-purgeable-space-on-macos-5063b211c 8fa

Sometimes when i read this it actually pays to think how good spinning hard drives really are...

Maybe not in performance, which is where Apple headed too.. but at least with spinning drives in Mac's you know where the space was going, how much u have (unless u don't upgrade to Sierra)

*but* i can't help feeling SSD's gave Apple this "advantage" of confusing the user in the OS.

Sometimes when i read this it actually pays to think how good spinning hard drives really are...

Maybe not in performance, which is where Apple headed too.. but at least with spinning drives in Mac's you know where the space was going, how much u have (unless u don't upgrade to Sierra)

*but* i can't help feeling SSD's gave Apple this "advantage" of confusing the user in the OS.

Sometimes i do a "secureerase freespace" on purpose via Terminal (once) most of this is free now

re: "Unfortunately there's no way to free purgeable space."

This is not true.

See the later answer. Here's what I just did to rid 72 GB purgable space:

Recognize that the purgable space is likely from Time Machine doing automatic hourly backups when you are disconnected from your external source. (In Sierra).

To see this, Open Time Machine. If, when disconnected from your external backup drive, you see a bundle of backups (I did!), then this is what's going on. MacOS is creating intermediary Time Machine backups while you're away from your external device. Potentially a very nice feature. Just not if you need the space to install large files or do a DRIVE sync or something.

To watch the purgable space go away, open up About This Mac, and click the Storage tab. This shows you your drive usage for any partitions, your purgable space, and particularly your remaining available space.

30 Second Solution:

- Go to System Preferences

- Open Time Machine

- Uncheck: Back Up Automatically.

That's it! Watch your purgable space disappear, reclaimed by available space!

I just gained back my 72GB.

(You can then decide if you want to return on Time Machine while you are away from your external drive -- or not).