6 ms·

> "My iPhone 14 Pro has 35Gb of "system data" which has basically filled up the entire storage I had left" I occasionally use a macbook pro at £WORK for a few

> "My iPhone 14 Pro has 35Gb of "system data" which has basically filled up the entire storage I had left" I occasionally use a macbook pro at £WORK for a few apple specific processes, and it currently has 188.67gb of "system data" that I have no idea how to clean up or remove. It's marked separately from the 11.01gb of macOS in the storage settings, and it constantly complains about the disk almost being full. Updating and restarting don't clear it, I wish I could just rm -rf it all. Does anyone know how I can at least see what it is, and potentially even clean it up? EDIT: Thanks for the CleanMyMac recommendations, the 57.6gb of xcode caches that didn't show up in the "developer" section of the storage settings might have had something to do with it

mhammerc 8mo ago
Yes! You can go to the folder ~/Library and then delete what you want. To open the folder from a terminal: cd ~/Library open . In the Finder, you can enable "Calculate all sizes" from "View options," which will calculate folder sizes to understand what to clean first. This folder contains data from all apps; sometimes it is cache, sometimes persistent data. You will find all your previous apps taking gigabytes...
- JSR_FDED 8mo ago
  ~/Library/Caches - you can probably delete stuff ~/Library - definitely not
  - mhammerc 8mo ago
    As an example, I have ~/Library/Android/sdk which takes 8 Go. If I know I do not need the Android SDK, I can safely delete it.
murermader 8mo ago
You can use tools like CleanMyMac to show folders and their sizes. All cache and library files are counted under System, e.g. files from vagrant, docker, vms, old jetbrains IDEs, caches from rarely used/uninstalled apps etc. You don‘t need to buy the full version, you can just use the info and delete it manually in Finder.
- ryandrake 8mo ago
  Having to reach for a 3rd party tool to keep litter off your system is the opposite of the Just Works marketing that Apple stands by. One of the reasons for switching over to a Mac is so you don't have to sit there running these dicey Cleaner and Sweeper apps just to keep your system maintained. If a software's (OS or otherwise) pile of vague "caches" and "library files" grows unbounded, then I would consider that a bug.
arianvanp 8mo ago
Do you happen to be using Rosetta? The aot cache of that slowly fills up and its not easy to clean up. I remember i had to google some magic command to do it
torben-friis 8mo ago
The cleanmymac app let me do it, using the trial period. In my case it was due leftovers from music production software and an overblown docker image though, so YMMV.
armchairhacker 8mo ago
Download and open OmniDiskSweeper. THEN (important) go to Settings/Preferences > Privacy & Security > Full Disk Access, and enable it for OmniDiskSweeper. Then reopen OmniDiskSweeper and it should reveal the missing data.
phaser 8mo ago
I have the exact same problem. plus, I have usually surprised system processes eating up CPU like ‘suggestd’ and it’s hard to get information about what it does. I guess one could find out by reverse engineering, but that’s not the point. they could easily make it transparent and documented and the feeling of my own computer being a black box is constantly pissing me off. I regret all my investment in the Apple ecosystem and I wish I hadn’t locked me in as much.
iberator 8mo ago
Are you Java developer? For example Gradle tends to download half of the Internet and the store it etc
ricardobayes 8mo ago
Backing up the device and restoring should clean it. Also there is some "folk remedy" of setting the system clock in the future then force restarting the device.
- FireBeyond 8mo ago
  Apple... '"It just works" used to be our motto'.
postalcoder 8mo ago
The lowest hanging fruit is to clear caches from whatever package manager you're using. I highly recommend Daisy Disk[0], which shows a folder level breakdown of your disk space usage. Hyperspace[1] is pretty nice as well. It works well if you have a lot of duplicate files. It uses APFS clones to reclaim the disk space. 0: https://daisydiskapp.com https://daisydiskapp.com 1: http://hypercritical.co/2025/02/25/hyperspace http://hypercritical.co/2025/02/25/hyperspace
Hnus 8mo ago
I am pretty sure its this /System/Volumes/Data/Users/<your_user>/Library/Containers/com.apple.Safari/Data/Library/Caches/CloudKit/ I need to `rm` it at least once a month, I ran `du -sh` and it takes 153gb on my machine
- ninkendo 8mo ago
  So, it’s interesting. You know how with RAM, it’s a good idea for it to be “fully utilized”, in a sense that anything apps aren’t using should be used for file system cache? And then when apps do need it, the least-recently-used cache can be freed to make room? It’s actually similar for the file system itself! If macOS is using 153GB for iCloud cache, that’s only a bad thing if it’s not giving it back up automatically if your filesystem starts getting full. Because it means you have local copies of things that live in iCloud, making the general experience faster. In that sense, you want your filesystem to be “fully utilized”. The disk viewer in macOS that shows you filesystem utilization should even be differentiating this sort of cache from “real” utilization… this cache should (if everything is working right) should logically be considered “free space”. Now of course, if there are bugs where the OS isn’t giving that storage back when you need it, that all goes out the window. And yeah… bugs like these happen too damned often. But I still say, the idea is actually a good one, at least in theory.
  - port11 8mo ago
    This would be acceptable if solid state storage weren’t so susceptible to write wear, in a laptop where nothing is user serviceable.
    - ninkendo 8mo ago
      What would the alternative be? Simply don't cache anything you get from icloud? Because even if you delete it more eagerly, that's a write cycle. In fact, avoiding deleting it in case the user gets it again, is going to put fewer write cycles on the SSD, assuming you're going to write it to the SSD at all. The only alternative I can think of is keeping everything from iCloud in RAM, but that is a pretty insane idea. (Also, then the first thing you'd get is people complaining that iCloud eats up all their 5G data caps, etc.)
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
1e1a 8mo ago
Often lots of this "system data" is in ~/Library/Caches: du -hs ~/Library/Caches/* This will show you the cache size for each application.
SoKamil 8mo ago
Dot folders contribute to the „System Data” section. Maven/Gradle caches can take a lot of space. Take a look at your home folder first and press CMD + SHIFT + . to reveal hidden folders. You might not need 3rd party software.
dodos 8mo ago
Everytime I upload a package with altool, it makes a copy of the package somewhere in /var/folders. Luckily rebooting the computer cleans this up so it's not the issue you are running into, but if I'm not careful about rebooting the systems, our CI/CD stops working until I get physical access to the machines for a reboot.
drapado 8mo ago
https://github.com/tw93/Mole https://github.com/tw93/Mole
tim333 8mo ago
I was wondering what was up with my macbook and then Chrome popped something up saying I had something like 200gb of web storage that random websites had put on my machine.

mhammerc 8mo ago

Yes! You can go to the folder ~/Library and then delete what you want. To open the folder from a terminal: cd ~/Library open . In the Finder, you can enable "Calculate all sizes" from "View options," which will calculate folder sizes to understand what to clean first. This folder contains data from all apps; sometimes it is cache, sometimes persistent data. You will find all your previous apps taking gigabytes...

JSR_FDED 8mo ago
~/Library/Caches - you can probably delete stuff ~/Library - definitely not
- mhammerc 8mo ago
  As an example, I have ~/Library/Android/sdk which takes 8 Go. If I know I do not need the Android SDK, I can safely delete it.

murermader 8mo ago

You can use tools like CleanMyMac to show folders and their sizes. All cache and library files are counted under System, e.g. files from vagrant, docker, vms, old jetbrains IDEs, caches from rarely used/uninstalled apps etc. You don‘t need to buy the full version, you can just use the info and delete it manually in Finder.

ryandrake 8mo ago
Having to reach for a 3rd party tool to keep litter off your system is the opposite of the Just Works marketing that Apple stands by. One of the reasons for switching over to a Mac is so you don't have to sit there running these dicey Cleaner and Sweeper apps just to keep your system maintained. If a software's (OS or otherwise) pile of vague "caches" and "library files" grows unbounded, then I would consider that a bug.

arianvanp 8mo ago

Do you happen to be using Rosetta? The aot cache of that slowly fills up and its not easy to clean up. I remember i had to google some magic command to do it

torben-friis 8mo ago

The cleanmymac app let me do it, using the trial period. In my case it was due leftovers from music production software and an overblown docker image though, so YMMV.

armchairhacker 8mo ago

Download and open OmniDiskSweeper. THEN (important) go to Settings/Preferences > Privacy & Security > Full Disk Access, and enable it for OmniDiskSweeper. Then reopen OmniDiskSweeper and it should reveal the missing data.

phaser 8mo ago

I have the exact same problem. plus, I have usually surprised system processes eating up CPU like ‘suggestd’ and it’s hard to get information about what it does. I guess one could find out by reverse engineering, but that’s not the point. they could easily make it transparent and documented and the feeling of my own computer being a black box is constantly pissing me off. I regret all my investment in the Apple ecosystem and I wish I hadn’t locked me in as much.

iberator 8mo ago

Are you Java developer? For example Gradle tends to download half of the Internet and the store it etc

ricardobayes 8mo ago

Backing up the device and restoring should clean it. Also there is some "folk remedy" of setting the system clock in the future then force restarting the device.

FireBeyond 8mo ago
Apple... '"It just works" used to be our motto'.

postalcoder 8mo ago

The lowest hanging fruit is to clear caches from whatever package manager you're using. I highly recommend Daisy Disk[0], which shows a folder level breakdown of your disk space usage. Hyperspace[1] is pretty nice as well. It works well if you have a lot of duplicate files. It uses APFS clones to reclaim the disk space. 0: https://daisydiskapp.com https://daisydiskapp.com 1: http://hypercritical.co/2025/02/25/hyperspace http://hypercritical.co/2025/02/25/hyperspace

Hnus 8mo ago

I am pretty sure its this /System/Volumes/Data/Users/<your_user>/Library/Containers/com.apple.Safari/Data/Library/Caches/CloudKit/ I need to `rm` it at least once a month, I ran `du -sh` and it takes 153gb on my machine

ninkendo 8mo ago
So, it’s interesting. You know how with RAM, it’s a good idea for it to be “fully utilized”, in a sense that anything apps aren’t using should be used for file system cache? And then when apps do need it, the least-recently-used cache can be freed to make room? It’s actually similar for the file system itself! If macOS is using 153GB for iCloud cache, that’s only a bad thing if it’s not giving it back up automatically if your filesystem starts getting full. Because it means you have local copies of things that live in iCloud, making the general experience faster. In that sense, you want your filesystem to be “fully utilized”. The disk viewer in macOS that shows you filesystem utilization should even be differentiating this sort of cache from “real” utilization… this cache should (if everything is working right) should logically be considered “free space”. Now of course, if there are bugs where the OS isn’t giving that storage back when you need it, that all goes out the window. And yeah… bugs like these happen too damned often. But I still say, the idea is actually a good one, at least in theory.
- port11 8mo ago
  This would be acceptable if solid state storage weren’t so susceptible to write wear, in a laptop where nothing is user serviceable.
  - ninkendo 8mo ago
    What would the alternative be? Simply don't cache anything you get from icloud? Because even if you delete it more eagerly, that's a write cycle. In fact, avoiding deleting it in case the user gets it again, is going to put fewer write cycles on the SSD, assuming you're going to write it to the SSD at all. The only alternative I can think of is keeping everything from iCloud in RAM, but that is a pretty insane idea. (Also, then the first thing you'd get is people complaining that iCloud eats up all their 5G data caps, etc.)

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

1e1a 8mo ago

Often lots of this "system data" is in ~/Library/Caches: du -hs ~/Library/Caches/* This will show you the cache size for each application.

SoKamil 8mo ago

Dot folders contribute to the „System Data” section. Maven/Gradle caches can take a lot of space. Take a look at your home folder first and press CMD + SHIFT + . to reveal hidden folders. You might not need 3rd party software.

dodos 8mo ago

Everytime I upload a package with altool, it makes a copy of the package somewhere in /var/folders. Luckily rebooting the computer cleans this up so it's not the issue you are running into, but if I'm not careful about rebooting the systems, our CI/CD stops working until I get physical access to the machines for a reboot.

drapado 8mo ago

https://github.com/tw93/Mole https://github.com/tw93/Mole

tim333 8mo ago

I was wondering what was up with my macbook and then Chrome popped something up saying I had something like 200gb of web storage that random websites had put on my machine.