'System' takes up more than 50GB of space

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'System' takes up more than 50GB of space

I'm on MacBook Air (13-inch, Early 2015) with a 128GB storage and the 'System' takes up 53.18GB of it. I've tried two solutions I found on the internet, first was deleting the things 'Time Machine' have but it got nothing since it wasn't enabled. The second solution I did was deleting the caches from '~/Library/Caches' and '/Library/Caches' (both are different. The other one has a ~) and it doesn't have more than 1GB.

I got a history of this Mac where the system crashed and I got to reformat the encrypted storage and reinstall MacOS and

MacBook Air

Posted on May 8, 2018 7:39 AM

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Answer 1

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macjack

Level 10

111,242 points

May 8, 2018 8:17 PM in response to JVerzosaTan

The Storage tab does not always report correctly. Also check by choosing your Mac HD and "Get Info" (command-i). It may be different. Try rebuilding Spotlight index.

How to rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support

Some of the space may also be from Time Machine Snapshots.

About Time Machine local snapshots - Apple Support

After you've freed up some space download Omni DiskSweeper:

https://www.omnigroup.com/more

DiskSweeper can give you a more accurate read of disk space than Finder or Storage Tab of About this Mac. Itcan also show you the precise size and location of all your files. Itcan show you the precise size and location of all your files. It will inventory your disk starting from the files that take up the most space. If you want you can even delete files from OmniDisk Sweeper. But be careful some of the items may be important to your system.

For information about the Other category in the Storage display, please see Apple Support Topic

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202867

Also, empty the Trash if you haven't already done so. If you use iPhoto, empty its internal Trash first:

iPhoto ▹ Empty Trash

In Photos: File ▹ Show Recently Deleted ▹ Delete All

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Answer 2

JVerzosaTan Author

Level 1

7 points

May 8, 2018 8:28 PM in response to macjack

I tried the first solution you've suggested. Didn't worked for me.

As I've previously mentioned, the Time Machine thing didn't worked for me since it was disabled

But as you suggested, I tried Omni DiskSweeper and it solved my problem. I got tons of applications and they all use caches I didn't knew existed at all and it was a couple of GBs taking up my space. Mostly were video clips which are usually big files. You just have to know how to identify what you need to get rid of, but be careful of deleting important files your Mac needs in its system.

The problem was Mac recognize it as system files and system files are not viewable with just 'System Information' utilities.

I tried a lot of disk managers (some costs some $) from the internet but didn't worked smooth unlike Omni DiskSweeper, it's easy to use.

Thank you @macJack and Omni DiskSweeper! Highly recommendable.

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Answer 3

macjack

Level 10

111,242 points

May 9, 2018 5:35 AM in response to JVerzosaTan

You're welcome. Glad it's sorted.

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'System' takes up more than 50GB of space

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