When the Finder works out how much space is available on disk, what does it count as being “purgeable”? The answer may surprise you.
free space
The Finder reported free space had risen by over 80 GB, that’s more than 50%. It looked like something had wiped some of my media libraries.
You’re running bit short of disk space, so put tens of GB of old files into the Trash, then empty it. Why doesn’t the amount of free space increase?
You’re in control of a traditional file system, but with snapshots, clones, sparse files and other volumes sharing free space, APFS isn’t as simple.
It’s a fair and simple question: how much free space is needed to update Ventura from 13.0 to 13.1? Is it 2.53, 12.97, 13.22, 13.56 or 14 GB?
A simple worked example showing the effect of snapshots and changes in hidden system files in consuming free space on APFS.
It depends whether you’re going to boot macOS from it, on the space required for snapshots, and how large they could become. And there’s more.
Why Time Machine makes snapshots, and how they can grow and apparently consume free space. What you can and should do to manage this.
One likely cause of vanishing free space are large snapshots. So how can you tell why a snapshot is large, and how can you avoid it?
Snapshots are of great value, but can grow large if you don’t keep an eye on them. If you find Time Machine or another backup utility is storing large snapshots, here’s what to do.
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