How to delete "system" storage?

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It's eating up the majority of my memory. I'd like to free all of that up.

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014), macOS Sierra (10.12.1)

Posted on Dec 12, 2016 12:04 PM

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3 replies

Dec 16, 2016 2:15 PM in response to silvera22

On a commonsense level, I agree that you should avoid deleting System files unless you really know what you're doing. That said, your System storage allocation is huge. As of today, Apple still sells a MacBook Air with 128GB of storage, and there's an expectation on that machine that a 'clean' System will take up somewhere between 8GB-13GB. So how/why are you using 80GB+ more than that? There are many reasons, but I'd start with:


  • uninstalling any old/unused applications, using actual uninstallers or referring to the developers' websites for instructions
  • this isn't a machine that is rarely rebooted, correct?
  • how many full OS X version updates have you done on this machine?
  • you're not a graphic designer/font hoarder, are you?
  • DaisyDisk is a great space analyzer that can help target where chunks of possibly deletable files are located (or at least give a clue to why you're short on space)


There is also the nuclear option, which is a Clean Install. That would take some planning (multiple good backups, application installers, etc.), but it would get you back to the most streamlined version of Sierra it could be.

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How to delete "system" storage?

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