The Spotlight index is a few gigabytes, and rebuilding it costs a day
Every volume carries a hidden index proportional to its contents. When it is worth rebuilding, when to exclude a folder, and what it costs you.
582 guides
Mac storage, explained.
What fills your disk, where it hides, and what is safe to remove. Every guide gives you a way to check it on your own Mac.
Your external drive has hidden folders on it, and one is a second Trash
Copied 400 GB and the drive says 430 GB used. Where the difference goes, including the Trash that empties separately, and how to clear each part.
Sparse bundles grow to fit and do not shrink when you delete
A disk image keeps the space it once used, even after you empty it. How to compact one, and how to find images you mounted once and forgot.
A migrated Mac often carries a second home folder nobody uses
Migration Assistant and old accounts leave complete home folders on the disk, invisible from your own Finder. How to find and remove them safely.
Before you sell a Mac: the order that leaves nothing behind
Erasing the disk is the last step, not the first. What to sign out of first, why the order matters, and what a wipe does not cover.
The update needs more space than it says, and here is why
An update needs room to download, unpack and apply at once. What the real requirement is, and the fastest gigabytes when you are short.
How to live with a 256 GB Mac without fighting it every week
A small drive is workable with four decisions made once. What to keep local, what to stream, and where the space always goes on a small Mac.
Why your Mac fills up faster than you put anything on it
Nothing on a Mac removes anything by default. The five processes that add space on their own, and which of them you can switch off.
Homebrew installs more than you asked for, and keeps it all
The packages you installed pull in dependencies that stay after you remove them. What brew autoremove finds, and where the rest of the size is.
Steam keeps shader caches and downloads long after the game is gone
Games are the obvious part. The workshop content, shader caches and interrupted downloads around them are what nobody uninstalls.
Adobe's caches are larger than the applications, and there are four
Media caches, previews, autosaves and installer files accumulate across every Adobe app. Which are safe to clear and the settings that cap them.
Zoom's recordings folder is the one nobody remembers
Local recordings are saved to your Documents folder at full size and never cleaned up. Where they are, plus the caches around them.