migrating apps to an external drive but storage does show a change in HD space on external or main drive

My iMac Mini has a relatively small 250gb that's almost full. I added two external SSD drives - I TB to move music music production apps and files from the iMac drive and 2B to backup the 1TB and also use as the Time Machine. I couldn't move the folders holding the apps so I created new folders on the external drive and moved all apps onto the new folders on the1TB drive.

I am able to open the apps from the external drive but "About This Mac" does not show any significant change in the usage in either the internal or external drive.

I am assuming there is a correct way to get this done and free up space on the internal drive - can you help?

Mac mini 2018 or later

Posted on Oct 22, 2022 10:04 AM

Top-ranking reply

Barney-15E

Level 10

121,316 points

Posted on Oct 23, 2022 06:36 AM

Apps are not large, in general. Moving them won’t free up storage significantly.

It also takes a while for an SSD to switch the freed storage to be usable, again. It doesn’t appear immediately like an HDD.

The data create by an app is not stored inside the app. Moving the app won’t move the files you created with the app.

Many of Apple’s apps allow you to change the location of the file storage, Movies, TV, Photos, Music, possibly more. You have to move the data, not the app.

When you move to another volume, it copies, so you would also need to go back and delete the originals.

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migrating apps to an external drive but storage does show a change in HD space on external or main drive

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