I recently started getting error messages about running out of space and discovered my system files are taking 668gb. Also, "Optimize storage" is not appearing as an option in System Settings > Storage.
MacBook Pro 14″, macOS 14.6
When the Operating System Alerts the user " running out of space " it usually means exactly what it says
The internal Drive is So Full it can not add one more bit of data
Immediate remedial actions are required to avoid a possible failure to even boot up the computer from Off Position
Part 1 of 2
System Data: Contains files not listed here. It includes system files like log files, caches, VM files, and runtime resources. Temporary files, fonts, app support files, and plug-ins are also included.
You can’t manage this category’s contents. macOS manages them, and the size varies based on your Mac’s state.
Users have control over the User Account Folder (Home Folder). All other areas are inaccessible.
Purgeable Space is controlled by the operating system. When the system needs more empty space, it moves some purgeable space to empty space.
There’s no user action to hasten this transition. It can take days or longer.
The links below help identify what’s taking up space on the internal drive and provide ways to remove user-controlled data (Home Folder).
Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac.
What is “Other” storage on a Mac, and how can I clean it?
Free up storage space on your Mac.
How to delete Time Machine snapshots on your Mac.
This often occurs if the Time Machine Drive isn’t attached to the computer and TM Backup is set to run on a schedule.
TM Backup makes snapshots on the internal drive until the Time Machine Drive is attached. Then, the snapshots are transferred to the external drive.
View APFS snapshots in Disk Utility on Mac
See used and available storage space on your Mac.
Locate backups of your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
If you use a suite of Adobe applications on this computer, they may create large cache files that can be removed. However, the Adobe cache files will be recreated as the applications need them.
https://helpx.adobe.com/ca/premiere-pro/kb/clear-cache.html
The same clearing of System Cache files can be achieved by booting into Safe Mode. They will be recreated as the system requires.
Part 2 of 2
From another contributor @etresoft regarding Free Space and Available Space
Free vs available disk space huge differe… - Apple Community
Quote >> “ The "available" storage is the amount of used storage that the operating system could automatically delete if it felt that it was really necessary. The "free" storage is the amount that you can actually use for something.
There are system processes that run in the background and automatically delete some of the "available" storage and convert it to "free". If you completely run out of storage, then those system processes will try a little harder. When you "delete" files you are just hinting to the operating system that you don't need those files anymore. The operating system will eventually remove them, but on its own schedule.
Certain tools will allow you to force the issue and manually clean up some of this storage and manually delete local snapshots. But that is only temporary. " << End Quote
Optimize storage is only appropriate for syncing desktop and documents folders to iCloud Drive. If you have not enabled that there will be no optimized storage.
The term “system data“ just means Spotlight could not categorize the item as one of the other listed types. So, all of that system data could be your data just mischaracterized, or it can be Time Machine local snapshots, or it can be runaway caches or logs.
The first thing I would do is re-indexSpotlight and make sure it seems to be working correctly. Then check your storage. However, all of those storage displays are almost useless to the user As you have found.
with you have been run out of space on the drive you’re going to need to offload some of your data to an external drive and then wait for the drives garbage collection to clean up the storage and make it ready for writing again. That will take a bit of time as it needs free space in order to do that process.
once you have made some free space available, you can start the process of figuring out why you have so much system data listed
System files take 668gb.
