You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

User folder radically larger than sub-folders w/in it.

I am running OS 11.7.10 (Big Sur) on a MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019), w/a 1Tb internal hard drive. Despite a great effort at back-ups and keeping at least 100 Gb of storage clear at all times, I recently got warnings about insufficient HD space. I found that my internal drive was down to 12GB even though I hadn't saved or downloaded (intentionally) any large files since my last cleanup.


In doing a "Get Info" review of all my top-level folders, my main user folder shows 875 GB of data on disk. All the sub-folders within it add-up to (at most) 350 GB of data. Where is the other 525 GB? How can I access that to see what can be removed? The inability to smartly and directly manage file data on this drive is maddening, especially when 75+ GB seems to suddenly disappear and cause my apps to crash. Please provide any advice on what this data may be and how to access & manage it. Thanks! - Joseph

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 10.12

Posted on Sep 30, 2023 7:32 PM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Oct 1, 2023 6:44 PM

Most likely the data will be found in the hidden APFS snapshots which will not show up within the Finder or with any third party apps scanning the folders sizes since the snapshots are "outside" of the current file system seen by the Finder. These snapshots are usually created by backup software such as Time Machine. You can use the information in this Apple article to view & delete APFS snapshots:

View APFS snapshots in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support


FYI, most places within macOS will show you the "Available" space which is very misleading since it does not mean the storage space is immediately able to be used. If you look closely, many times the "Available" space will be shown with "Purgeable" space in parenthesis. Purgeable space is the portion of the Available space which will be released for use at some unknown time in the future. Free space, the space which is immediately available for use right now can be calculated from the Available & Purgeable space.


Free = Available - Purgeable


The only place I am aware of which mentions Free space specifically is within Disk Utility when you click on the "Data" volume on the left pane of Disk Utility. On the right pane immediately below the bar graph is the value for "Free" space.


So much for macOS being simple to use & understand.


Similar questions

3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Oct 1, 2023 6:44 PM in response to Joseph_DC

Most likely the data will be found in the hidden APFS snapshots which will not show up within the Finder or with any third party apps scanning the folders sizes since the snapshots are "outside" of the current file system seen by the Finder. These snapshots are usually created by backup software such as Time Machine. You can use the information in this Apple article to view & delete APFS snapshots:

View APFS snapshots in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support


FYI, most places within macOS will show you the "Available" space which is very misleading since it does not mean the storage space is immediately able to be used. If you look closely, many times the "Available" space will be shown with "Purgeable" space in parenthesis. Purgeable space is the portion of the Available space which will be released for use at some unknown time in the future. Free space, the space which is immediately available for use right now can be calculated from the Available & Purgeable space.


Free = Available - Purgeable


The only place I am aware of which mentions Free space specifically is within Disk Utility when you click on the "Data" volume on the left pane of Disk Utility. On the right pane immediately below the bar graph is the value for "Free" space.


So much for macOS being simple to use & understand.


Sep 30, 2023 9:44 PM in response to Joseph_DC

Hi Joseph, yes, more maddening every year.


OmniDiskSweeper shows you the files on your drive, largest to smallest, and lets you quickly Trash or open them.

https://www.omnigroup.com/more/


Purging local backups

Please note that although this doesn't affect your remote backup from Time Machine, this will get rid of the redundancy (at least until the next Time Machine backup) that a local backup disk will provide. If you need such redundancy or are worried about the recovery of your data then you would be best served to let macOS determine when to purge these files.

Start Terminal from spotlight.

At the terminal type tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates. 

Hit enter.


Here, you'll now see a list of all of the locally stored Time Machine backup snapshots stored on your disk.

Next you can remove the snapshots based on their date. I prefer to delete them one at at time. Once my "System" disk usage is at an acceptable level, I stop deleting but you can delete all of them if you want to reclaim all of the disk space.


Back at the terminal, type tmutil deletelocalsnapshots YYYY-MM-DD-HHMMSS , where will be one of the dates from your backup. This will be in the form of xxx-yy-zz-abcdef. Try to start with the oldest snapshot.

Hit enter.

Repeat for as many snapshot dates as required


http://www.thagomizer.com/blog/2018/03/27/cleaning-up-time-machine-local-snapshots.html


tmutil deletelocalsnapshots / # deletes all the snapshots


Thanks to BobHarris file sizes, Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal:...


sudo du -hx | sort -h 


sudo du -hx ~/| sort -h 


User folder radically larger than sub-folders w/in it.

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.