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I had the issue, was related to how APFS keeps deleted data around until it's forced to flush it. It didn't flush it... Had to do a full reinstall to get rid of

I had the issue, was related to how APFS keeps deleted data around until it's forced to flush it. It didn't flush it... Had to do a full reinstall to get rid of the issue.

acranox 6y ago
From what I’ve seen, if you are using Time Machine, then the TM backup has to run before the space from deleted files can be freed.
ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
This seems to be connected to FileVault. If the volume is FileVault-encrypted, it can get quite “greedy” about holding onto deleted files. Even though it is supposed to let go of the space upon demand, it is my experience that it does not. When a big update came out (don’t remember exactly which one, but it was a couple or so months ago), my disk space was down to about 13GB free, even though I had deleted over 150GB of files. The update refused to run, citing lack of space. I had to wipe the disk, and use Migration Assistant to restore the disk. That was the second time this has happened. I think that this particular aspect of APFS still needs a lot of work.
drclau 6y ago
I’ve had free space problems during the actual upgrade. Turned out it was because Time Machine created a bunch of snapshots and never deleted them. You can check by running: tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates You can also manually delete the snapshots by using tmutil.
- jsjohnst 6y ago
  I’m pretty sure TimeMachine related issues (either bug or misfeature or something else TM related) is the cause for most folks having phantom disk space usage issues (not due to a bug specifically in APFS or FileVault), but obviously can’t prove that.
giuliomagnifico 6y ago
You couldn't just change the permission on the disk to solve the issue?
Tsiklon 6y ago
Anecdotally in my experience this has been local time machine snapshots occupying space. Unrelated to APFS specifically - I also use Dropbox and it takes filling the disk for it to finally purge content I’ve marked as online only with smart sync.

I had the issue, was related to how APFS keeps deleted data around until it's forced to flush it. It didn't flush it... Had to do a full reinstall to get rid of the issue.

acranox 6y ago

From what I’ve seen, if you are using Time Machine, then the TM backup has to run before the space from deleted files can be freed.

ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago

This seems to be connected to FileVault. If the volume is FileVault-encrypted, it can get quite “greedy” about holding onto deleted files. Even though it is supposed to let go of the space upon demand, it is my experience that it does not. When a big update came out (don’t remember exactly which one, but it was a couple or so months ago), my disk space was down to about 13GB free, even though I had deleted over 150GB of files. The update refused to run, citing lack of space. I had to wipe the disk, and use Migration Assistant to restore the disk. That was the second time this has happened. I think that this particular aspect of APFS still needs a lot of work.

drclau 6y ago

I’ve had free space problems during the actual upgrade. Turned out it was because Time Machine created a bunch of snapshots and never deleted them. You can check by running: tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates You can also manually delete the snapshots by using tmutil.

jsjohnst 6y ago
I’m pretty sure TimeMachine related issues (either bug or misfeature or something else TM related) is the cause for most folks having phantom disk space usage issues (not due to a bug specifically in APFS or FileVault), but obviously can’t prove that.

giuliomagnifico 6y ago

You couldn't just change the permission on the disk to solve the issue?

Tsiklon 6y ago

Anecdotally in my experience this has been local time machine snapshots occupying space. Unrelated to APFS specifically - I also use Dropbox and it takes filling the disk for it to finally purge content I’ve marked as online only with smart sync.