Mac mini storage discrepancy after deleting large video file

I ran out of storage in my Mac Mini, the only file that was taking that much space was a video that I was editing in Final Cut. So I transferred the file to a SSD, and I wanted to continue, but my Mac keeps on telling me that I don’t have any more space left, even though I deleted everything.

As you can see in the images, it says that my apps are taking 191 GB, but they should take 10 max, and now my iCloud Drive says that I’m using 175 GB, which is also not true, because I open them directly and the storage is not even close to the ones shown in my Mac.

I’m desperate, I don’t know what to do to solve this problem…


[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: Mac Mini Storage incorrect

Mac mini, macOS 14.6

Posted on Sep 27, 2025 9:08 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Sep 27, 2025 10:23 PM

Those Storage figures are eye candy that can not be trusted. Instead, check the free disk space via Disk Utility.


Also, you are using Final Cut -- did you let it import footage to its project (by default at ~/Movies) or was that footage only referenced from an external disk maybe? And did you let Final Cut by default create largish ProRes media files or did you disable that in its prefs (I recommend doing that unless you are using an old Mac that stutters without that help). But anyway you can delete those ProRes files to re-gain disk space with no ill effects (I am on another Mac right now so I can't access the FCP menu to do that).


And additionally in an APFS volume duplicating a large movie is very fast and takes (almost) no disk space, so deleting the duplicate releases no disk space either.

6 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Sep 27, 2025 10:23 PM in response to Isaac_29

Those Storage figures are eye candy that can not be trusted. Instead, check the free disk space via Disk Utility.


Also, you are using Final Cut -- did you let it import footage to its project (by default at ~/Movies) or was that footage only referenced from an external disk maybe? And did you let Final Cut by default create largish ProRes media files or did you disable that in its prefs (I recommend doing that unless you are using an old Mac that stutters without that help). But anyway you can delete those ProRes files to re-gain disk space with no ill effects (I am on another Mac right now so I can't access the FCP menu to do that).


And additionally in an APFS volume duplicating a large movie is very fast and takes (almost) no disk space, so deleting the duplicate releases no disk space either.

Sep 28, 2025 5:21 PM in response to Isaac_29

FYI, bad things can happen if you completely run out of Free storage space including being unable to delete any files to make more room due to how the APFS file system works (Apple didn't implement any safety buffers originally....not sure if they added any later on).


If you are using Time Machine and/or some third party backup software, then any files you delete may still be retained within the hidden APFS backup snapshots. Those APFS snapshots will be automatically deleted at some unknown time in the future once those snapshots have been transferred to external media.....for TM that is usually somewhere between 24-48 hours, for third party backup software it may be sooner or even much later depending how the app is configured. You can view & delete APFS snapshots by using the information in the following Apple article, but be cautious about deleting them if they have not yet been transferred to external media.

View APFS snapshots in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support


Also, your boot drive appears to only be 250GB in size.....that is extremely small for editing videos. You need to be very careful to never let the Free storage value dip below 20GB or better yet 20%. Ignore the "Available" storage value since it is very misleading......with macOS "Available" is not synonymous with Free. Unfortunately the only place where you can actually find the Free storage value is in Disk Utility or the Apple System Profiler. The Free storage space value is the most important storage value.



Mac mini storage discrepancy after deleting large video file

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