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Disable "Your disk is almost full" popup?

Hi,


is there any possibility to disable this popup in Mojave? My Macbook Air only has a 64 GB SSD with about 10 GB free disk space. Anyways this is plenty of space to get things done.

User uploaded file

This solution doesn't seem to work anymore Disable "Optimized Storage" popup.


-- Dennis

MacBook Air, macOS Mojave (10.14)

Posted on Oct 7, 2018 3:37 AM

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Posted on Nov 1, 2018 1:14 AM

I'm sorry @EauRouge, but this is not a quality answer. On a 128 GB disk like mine, there are only a couple of files that you can remove, the others you need, hence the disk space issue. It is simply not possible for Mojave to require that space needs to be freed every few minutes. I used to have as little as 3-5 GB free space until Mojave and that was fine (from a user point of view; I understand this may have stressed the SSD, but this is my SSD, it should not decide for me). Now I manage to free up to 10 GB, but this is still not enough for Mojave. Well, I'd say either this is a bug or an over zealous restriction in much the same way than slowing down iPhones was without warning the user when the battery was getting old. It seems APFS does a better job at managing free space on iOS than it does on macOS.


There used to be ways to silence the dialog, but they don't see to work anylonger:

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/254485/silencing-your-disk-is-almost-f ull-notification

16 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Nov 1, 2018 1:14 AM in response to Dennis..

I'm sorry @EauRouge, but this is not a quality answer. On a 128 GB disk like mine, there are only a couple of files that you can remove, the others you need, hence the disk space issue. It is simply not possible for Mojave to require that space needs to be freed every few minutes. I used to have as little as 3-5 GB free space until Mojave and that was fine (from a user point of view; I understand this may have stressed the SSD, but this is my SSD, it should not decide for me). Now I manage to free up to 10 GB, but this is still not enough for Mojave. Well, I'd say either this is a bug or an over zealous restriction in much the same way than slowing down iPhones was without warning the user when the battery was getting old. It seems APFS does a better job at managing free space on iOS than it does on macOS.


There used to be ways to silence the dialog, but they don't see to work anylonger:

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/254485/silencing-your-disk-is-almost-f ull-notification

Oct 7, 2018 5:41 AM in response to Dennis..

No I don't think you can disable it, and it is there for a very good reason. Most folk will tell you you shouldn't let your Mac run down to 12-15Gbs of free space as the operating system needs room to move files about which it is always doing. If you run with too little free space there is a chance of the system freezing up and the potential loss of your data. Buy an external drive and keep all the stuff you don't need on a daily basis there.

Nov 1, 2018 1:26 AM in response to jmow

Well it is a general rule of thumb to keep at least 12-15Gbs free so the system can move and swap files around, if you choose to ignore the warnings then so be it. If you are filling your disk to such low levels of free space just off load files you don't need on a daily basis, images, movies usually take up the most space so move them off to an external drive.

Nov 1, 2018 10:29 AM in response to jmow

jmow wrote:


I'm sorry @EauRouge, but this is not a quality answer. On a 128 GB disk like mine, there are only a couple of files that you can remove, the others you need, hence the disk space issue. It is simply not possible for Mojave to require that space needs to be freed every few minutes. I used to have as little as 3-5 GB free space until Mojave and that was fine (from a user point of view; I understand this may have stressed the SSD, but this is my SSD, it should not decide for me). Now I manage to free up to 10 GB, but this is still not enough for Mojave. Well, I'd say either this is a bug or an over zealous restriction in much the same way than slowing down iPhones was without warning the user when the battery was getting old. It seems APFS does a better job at managing free space on iOS than it does on macOS.



Well, you must remember that your disk/SSD is more than just storage space: it is the component that makes your device run. Every time you do anything at all, it needs to find space to write and/or find the file to read, so it works better if you maintain more continuous empty space - especially with SSDs which are written to in blocks. If you do not maintain enough space for it to work properly, you will get kernel panics, beachballs, and finally, a corrupted disk.


So, it’s your decision of course. FWIW, I would never buy anything with only a 128 GB disk and I always keep about 50% empty. The only thing with that small a drive is my iPad Pro which I use for reading, photography (the pics are moved off), and projecting TV shows on my TV.

Nov 2, 2018 2:46 AM in response to Dennis..

@dennis, I'm on Mojave as well and I have found that the following lines work. I have stored them in a .command file on my desktop to run them after any reboot or OS upgrade. This works on 10.14.1 as well.


You may need to do this for every user logged in.


```

launchctl stop com.apple.diskspaced

killall -STOP diskspaced

```

Nov 2, 2018 2:55 AM in response to babowa

FWIW, I would never buy anything with only a 128 GB disk and I always keep about 50% empty.


There wasn't much choice for a Macbook Air back in 2012. Given Apple current prices, anything above 512 GB is unreasonnable and keeping 50% empty means a 512 GB drives becomes 256 GB which is too small for my use.


I'm not talking about an office laptop where budget is less of a worry, but of a home laptop. Especially in Europe where you need to add around 500 USD on top of the US price to get a decent Macbook Pro (or any Mac as it turns out).

Nov 2, 2018 8:35 AM in response to jmow

If cost is an issue, I would buy one or more external hard drives and keep all the usually space hogging videos, photos, movies, etc. on the external. You can specify where to keep the library so it integrates with the app on your internal. I keep an extraordinary amount of space because, when you do a lot of movie or video editing and rendering, it is recommended that you keep as much empty space as you have temporary files in your project which, for me, can easily result in 100+ GB of temp files for a one hour HD project. The processor and the app needs that space for the editing/rendering processes and makes the whole thing more efficient (and the side effect is that you never get the “need more space” pop up).

Nov 8, 2018 9:42 AM in response to jmow

This works for a while (you can also kill the process from Activity Monitor), but it keeps coming back! My efforts to disable it through launchctl disable were also ineffective.


By the way, it is very disappointing that when a question is asked about how to disable something that people say that you should just make more free disk space instead of answering the question!

Nov 8, 2018 3:23 PM in response to bob2537

By the way, it is very disappointing that when a question is asked about how to disable something that people say that you should just make more free disk space instead of answering the question!


So, I'll answer the question: You can't disable it. Apple has decided to "close up/wall" the OS to keep it safe (mimicking iOS).


If there was a viable answer that does not violate any terms from Apple, you would get it.

Nov 9, 2018 6:25 PM in response to igordon

That would be about 10% which is approaching/passing the recommended minimums. I've never gotten one of those messages, but then I maintain about 50% empty on a 500 GB drive (that is because I do a fair amount of graphics and video editing and that including rendering requires at least as much empty space as temporary files in your project which, for a one hour HD video, can total 100 - 150 GB. So, I prefer that my Mac has all the space it needs to do an efficient and outstanding job - which it does). FWIW, your hard drive or SSD is not just "storage" - it is literally the place where anything and everything you do takes place: every time you do anything, it gets written to disk, possibly deleted again, re-written with a larger file, etc, etc, etc. Give the OS room to breathe.

Disable "Your disk is almost full" popup?

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