Help needed! Recovering disk space on a Macbook..

Hey there!

You might be able to find what's taking all the space by:

1. Apple Menu -> About This Mac

2. Click the Storage Tab then click Manage

Look down the left side of the screen that pops up. It'll show applications, bin, books, documents etc and show how much each of those take up on your disk. If you go into applications you can find if any applications are taking up a lot of space also. I found that Chrome went a bit wild on mine, taking up like 60GB. I've switched over to Edge now instead. Also, anything in your 'bin' still takes up diskspace until you empty the bin.

Hope this helps a bit!

xx Elle

On the pc there is a tool cleaner...see if there is a Mac equivalent. Also...not sure if macs does this.

But Google defragment drive, also a handy tool, as it analyses your hard drive, and in essence, restructures it...to make free space available.

Have you tried switching it off and on again?

(I'm going to quickly run away after saying that, but on the off chance you've not done a full restart recently as you've been busy with trying other things to tidy it up it's worth a go)

I use an App called Cleaner One Pro to clean the clag from my MacBook and also DaisyDisk to monitor what files I have on the SSD. Seems to do the trick of keeping thins ticking over nicely. Mine's a 2015 model so a bit long in the tooth. 

When you delete stuff (and empty the bin) you don’t immediately get all the space back. I’m not by my Mac, and I’ve forgotten the term MacOs uses but you can see it identified when you look at the details sourced from ‘about this Mac’ I generally find a couple of reboots releases that space.

Another thought. If you have few apps on it, how about reinstalling it and load what you need from scratch?

MY imac had this issue years ago but i was always adding images which takes space plus every images retouched generates more files, plus photoshop grows exponentially with every update, i chose to install a bigger SSD for storage and a smaller one just for software and OS, made a massive difference to both speed and space.

2014 MacBook is an old one, its hardware system is probably outdated. The first signs that your laptop is too old is that it starts to go very very slow and starts having all sorts of unexplainable issues with them (just like old people, really).

OriginalSin said

I use an App called Cleaner One Pro to clean the clag from my MacBook and also DaisyDisk to monitor what files I have on the SSD. Seems to do the trick of keeping thins ticking over nicely. Mine's a 2015 model so a bit long in the tooth. 

Right. There are some "disk space analyser" apps out there like this -- DaisyDisk is an interesting one. Stick to very popular ones you can get from the App Store for safety, and you might find one of those helpful.

Don't just go deleting stuff it suggests willy-nilly but it might help you find stuff you can ask us about. Anything in your home directory is worth investigating.

Also worth noting that some apps are incredibly large because of their sample data. So if you have truly unused apps lying around -- that you installed yourself! -- getting rid of them can help. I use an app called AppCleaner for that. (Well actually, I rarely use it because I install my apps another way, but it is a good choice for general iusers).

You could also try a factory reset which will sort your disk space issue but you’ll need to reinstall applications.

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/102664

HFS+ (the older Apple File System prior to APFS) as has been said, holds on to certain aspects of deleted files but the key point is to ensure the “deleted items” folders are actually also emptied, which can also be achieved via the storage manager.

Edited by Ted Smith Photography

I had this with a Mac of mine of a similar age. It is due to the face that it needs its operating system updating and as it is an older Mac you may not be able to do that. I had to bite the bullet and get a new Mac. Sorry not really what you want to hear.........

silly question first
but do you use one LR Catalogue for your whole LR Archive?
&
do you have your LR catalogue on your Mac's internal drive?

i had this issue on my old PC and it was also an Adobe issue as after some updates it would auto-default my LR Cache and LR generic Catalogue to my OS drive ( at the time it was 256GB )

Ring apple support, I have a 2015 iMac and they have been very helpful in the past and its no cost if its support. They can look at it online and advise.

Apple don't always give you the space back when you delete stuff. It flags the space as unused, but not available. Very annoying. Run a backup through Time Machine and they usually give you the space back.

I found that my disk space was all being used by render files in Final Cut Pro (you say no video so probably not that) and also backups of iPhones and iPads in iTunes. If you back these devices up manually in iTunes they'll use a load of space.

For finding out where space is used, DaisyDisk is your friend. Costs a tenner I think, but it's something I use all the time. Graphical user interface. Nice clickable pretty pie charts showing where the disk is being used. We all love pie.

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/daisydisk/id411643860

There is a very good video on you tube how to reduce your disk drive.  It is how to repair your scratch disk in photoshop.  I can't remember all of the options but for starters go into finder, select the Go option, pressooption key down and it reveals library, select application support, select adobe, select coomon and in there you should find a folder with cache files (1000's of them).  If you delete these files, it will give you space.  The files are like temp int files so no damage is done and you don't lose any images.  Find the you tube video first though, it is very helpful.