Unable to locate and delete GarageBand to free up storage on MacBook Air

You cannot delete any of the macOS preinstalled apps since they reside on a read-only signed & sealed system volume.

FYI, usually applications are not the source of the large amount of storage being used....it is the data you have created and/or stored on your Mac which is what you need to address.

You can also use OmniDiskSweeper to see where the largest files/folders are located, however, there are some locations which cannot be accessed.

You need to move your largest files/folders to external media, or delete the items you don't need & have stored on your Mac. Apple provides instructions for relocating the Photos Library, Music Library, & Movie Library to external media.....these items may contain a lot of data if you have a huge collection.

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

Even deleting or moving large amounts of data may not immediately show any increase in storage space since those deleted items may still reside in hidden APFS snapshots for a Time Machine backup (or even some third party backup apps). It may take 24-48 hours before you will see an increase in the Free storage space.

Ignore the "Available" storage value shown every where within macOS since it is very misleading. The most important storage value is the Free space which is most easily seen in Disk Utility. With macOS "Available" is not synonymous with Free.

I believe you can delete it from Launchpad. Find it there, click on the app icon and all apps will jiggle. Those that can be deleted from there will have a small x in the upper-left corner. Click on the x to delete the app.

SergZak wrote:

Find it there, click on the app icon and all apps will jiggle. Those that can be deleted from there will have a small x in the upper-left corner. Click on the x to delete the app.

Addendum: Click and HOLD the app icon.

Any apps downloaded from the Mac App Store will contain the x in the upper-left corner and be deleted in this way. Those that were not downloaded from the Mac App Store will NOT have the x and can be deleted by deleting the app from it's installed location (most likely, the Applications folder but this can vary).

GarageBand would normally be in the Macintosh HD > Applications folder. It might also have large support files elsewhere, e.g., in Macintosh HD > Library > Application Support > GarageBand.

I don't know if that's all the places where there are large GarageBand files, because I've never tried to remove it from my system.

P.S. – You have not told us which MacBook Air you have – but if this is an Intel-based MacBook Air with a hardware model year of 2017 or earlier, Other World Computing might have internal SSD upgrade kits for it. You could put a new, larger SSD into an external transfer enclosure, clone your current system to it, then swap the SSDs – and not have to worry quite as much about managing free space.

Starting in 2018, Apple soldered in SSDs, so for MacBook Airs with a hardware model year of 2018 or later, putting in a larger internal SSD is not an option.

Re: “You cannot delete any of the macOS preinstalled apps since they reside on a read-only signed & sealed system volume.”

I believe that Pages, Numbers, Keynote, GarageBand, and iMovie live outside the sealed system volume, and are individually downloadable from the App Store.

They also happen to be much larger than the apps that are in the sealed system volume - the ones you can’t delete or update separately from macOS.

Zaaarah wrote:

Thank you for the reply. Is it normal for the system to take up 105 GB out of a possible 121 GB?

These days, 128 GB isn't all that much. Still, 105 GB seems a bit excessive.

I'm running Sequoia, and System Settings > General > Storage reports that

• macOS takes up 30.92 GB – 11.61 of which is for Apple Intelligence
• System Data takes up 29.91 GB

Are you using Time Machine? If so, have you connected your Time Machine backup disk recently? When Time Machine doesn't have access to the backup drive, it creates snapshots on your startup drive of stuff it wants to back up when you give it the chance. Those snapshots can take room.

You could also try restarting your Mac in Safe Mode, then restarting it again normally.

Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support

This may cause the Mac to do some housekeeping.

I would not advise installing any "cleaner" applications.

HWTech wrote:

You cannot delete any of the macOS preinstalled apps since they reside on a read-only signed & sealed system volume.

I don't know if that's the case as I don't think these are pre-installed. They are available to you as free downloads with the purchase of a new Mac and are forever tied to your Apple Account. You can download them as needed and after doing so, you can delete them (and reinstall them) when desired.

That being said, I don't have any of those larger "productivity" apps (GarageBand, Pages, Numbers, etc) installed so I can't "experiment" with them. I do know however that they are all available to me as verified downloads in the Mac App Store.

SergZak wrote:

I don't know if that's the case as I don't think these are pre-installed. They are available to you as free downloads with the purchase of a new Mac and are forever tied to your Apple Account. You can download them as needed and after doing so, you can delete them (and reinstall them) when desired.

That being said, I don't have any of those larger "productivity" apps (GarageBand, Pages, Numbers, etc) installed so I can't "experiment" with them. I do know however that they are all available to me as verified downloads in the Mac App Store.

I used the command line to see where the actual GarageBand application was located. It is located on the "Data" volume, so you are most likely correct that this app can be deleted using the instructions in your other reply here.