Cleaning my mac hd

By Iconic, 14 July, 2026

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

Hello all:
yesterday i removed more than 150 GB from my MAc hd, to free up space,

but i did not find the free space available, i just free up like 20 Gb or something, i tried asking gemini but all solutions did not work.
is there an app or something to tell me what is the thing that takes all this space?
i empty my trash, and i used the clean my mac app, and everything still the same.
am using time machine,
any help will be highly appreciated

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Comments

By Tyler on Tuesday, July 14, 2026 - 22:23

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

Is there a particular category of data in System Settings > General > Storage that's taking a disproportionate amount of storage space? Knowing the types of data taking the most space on your disk could help inform possible suggestions for freeing it.

By Chris on Tuesday, July 14, 2026 - 23:29

GO into storage settings and check what's taking up space. If the other category is taking an abnormally large amount, there's your problem. This happens on iOS, and the only way to clear it is to perform a factory reset and restore from your backup. I'm not sure if tools like Onyx can fix the same problem on macOS, but it's worth a try. Onyx can clean all kinds of temp data. The system is supposed to free cache and other unneeded data in this other category, but there's a bug that prevents this, so it keeps getting larger until your storage is full.

By Bruce Harrell on Tuesday, July 14, 2026 - 23:56

Doesn't all that cleaned stuff end up in your trash folder?

By Iconic on Wednesday, July 15, 2026 - 10:07

all things are not so big, except the mac os is about 44 gb, music Creation is about 10GB, and i think documents is 20 or something,
other data is 2 gb, but system data, always shows me " calculating"
so, this is not clear what thing can take all these giggs

By Iconic on Wednesday, July 15, 2026 - 10:08

i cleaned it before anything, and still the same

By Tyler on Wednesday, July 15, 2026 - 13:25

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

If you don't use Apple Intelligence, you may be able to shrink the "macOS" category by turning it off in System Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri, which should remove its data from your Mac.

By Iconic on Wednesday, July 15, 2026 - 13:33

do not think this is the reason, because am not uisng it.

By Bruce Harrell on Wednesday, July 15, 2026 - 17:00

Are you making your iPhone sync with iCloud drive and if so, how much space is it taking? I have an iPhone 15 pro with 1tb memory which was almost completely taken up by my iCloud Drive. When I reduced the size of my iCloud drive by moving contents to other storage, free space on my phone soon appeared.

By Iconic on Wednesday, July 15, 2026 - 18:10

THe Icloud drive space here is about 14 MB, yes 14 MB, all my files are not stored on my Icloud drive at all, i depend on Dropbox.
also all the dropbox files are online,
any other suggestions will be highly appreciated

By Bruce Harrell on Wednesday, July 15, 2026 - 18:38

You have obtained a detailed breakdown of what is taking how much memory on your iPhone, right? Have you added it all up yourself, or are you relying on the phone's total? What I'm thinking is that there is/are one or more items occupying memory that is not appearing in that list of what and how much.

By Iconic on Wednesday, July 15, 2026 - 19:15

AM talking about my mac studio not Iphone at all.

By Bruce Harrell on Wednesday, July 15, 2026 - 21:30

It's the same difference. If you're paying attention, then you will have added up whatever/wherever you're syncing (or not syncing - it really doesn't matter other than where to look). What matters is, do your memory usage numbers add up to the total claimed by your Mac, or is there a discrepancy?

By Iconic on Wednesday, July 15, 2026 - 21:48

Numbers give me correct size,
but what is eatting my storage? and how can i get red of it?
specially, why when i delete something, nothing happened?
i removed more than 100 GB now from my application folder, and same size

By Bruce Harrell on Wednesday, July 15, 2026 - 22:32

Sorry, fellow Mac user. Apple computers can be very deceitful. I'm betting your Mac is lying to you.

First, you say you have the total memory and the individual memory usages add up, and each total agrees. Second, you say you deleted 100mb, but your Mac is still giving you the same totals.

There are only two possibilities I can think of to account for this:

1. Unknown to you, your Mac is secretly syncing behind your back; and

2. Having been having an affair with another Mac, your Mac is now pregnant, and it's terrified you'll find out.