Running out of Space on my 256Gb HD Mac mini M1, but almost everything is on iCloud

I looked at some of the other posts about the huge "System Data" and mine is the same "143.1gb of system data"

outside of that says music 14.07gb, photos 24.14gb


I used Omnidisksweeper as suggested to drill down in other posts, here's what I found 41.41 GB in this file that basically seems like Caches. Can this be deleted without harm?

/Users/caseybarnes/Library/Containers/com.apple.mediaanalysisd


Also

85.3 GB of music /Users/caseybarnes/Music/Music/Media


I get it saves some for easier quicker access, but it is all also in iCloud.


I have an external drive so if there is an easy way to offload this music as well and have Apple Music point to that I would do that as well.


Thanks in advance. I would like to be able to do basic tasks and update my OS again :)



Mac mini, macOS 15.3

Posted on Feb 17, 2025 08:44 AM

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Feb 17, 2025 09:11 AM in response to barnesreceipts

Yes you can free up space by moving your Photos, Music, Movie Libraries off to an external hard drive.


Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support

Change where your music files are stored on Mac - Apple Support

Move your iMovie for Mac library - Apple Support


However, to protect your off-loaded Libraries, you should use two external drives.

One external drive for your working user Libraries and one external drive to backup the Libraries.

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Running out of Space on my 256Gb HD Mac mini M1, but almost everything is on iCloud

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