Why is macOS Sierra taking so much system space? 160+ GB for system files? Stack Exchange Network Stack Exchange network consists of 175 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow, the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers. 10 Ways You Might Be Giving Other People Too Much Power Over Your Life Without Even Realizing It. If you grow resentful of people who take up too much of your energy, it's a sign you aren't. Select the DMG file and at the top click the 'Resize Image' button (or via the Menu Images Resize) A Disk Image will always take up as much space as you sized it. If you make it 2GB it will take up 2 GB of space on your hard drive or flash drive. A sparse images will grow according to it's contents with the selected size being the limit.

• Dmg Taking Up Too Much Space Mac
• Dmg Taking Up Too Much Space Iphone
• Dmg Taking Up Too Much Space On Ipad

So, your Mac is running out of storage. You try to figure out what’s taking up your disk space by clicking the Apple logo on the top-left of the screen, selecting About This Mac, and hitting the Storage tab.

To your surprise, you see a yellow bar representing “System” that seems to occupy way more space than you think it should. In the example above, it only shows 33.87 GB, but take a look at this Apple discussion — some Mac users report that System Storage takes an astonishing 250 GB.

Worse yet, you have no idea what’s included in “System” storage, because clicking the “Manage” button brings you to this System Information window… and the “System” row is greyed out.

Why does my Mac system require so much space?

What does it contain?

Is it safe to remove some of those system files?

How do I regain more storage space?

Questions like these may easily get to your head. Although my Mac now has a good amount of disk space available, I’m always wary of files that are taking up more space than they should.

I have no idea why “System” is greyed out while “Documents,” “System Junk,” “Trash,” etc. allow you to review the files based on size and type. My hunch is that Apple does this on purpose to prevent users from deleting system files that could lead to serious issues.

What Files Are Included in System Storage on Mac?

During my research, I found many people report that Apple counts iTunes backup files and app caches (e.g. Adobe video cache files) in the System category.

Since it’s greyed out and we are unable to click on that category for deeper analysis, we’ll have to use a third-party app to assist.

CleanMyMac X is perfect for this kind of analysis. Since I tested the app in our Mac cleaner review, it immediately came to my head when I saw “System” was greyed out in Storage. Note that CleanMyMac isn’t freeware, but the new “Space Lens” feature is free to use and it allows you to scan your Macintosh HD, and then show you an in-depth overview of what’s taking up disk space on your Mac.

Step 1:Download CleanMyMac and install the app on your Mac. Open it, under “Space Lens” module, first click the yellow “Grant Access” button to allow the app to access your Mac files and then select “Scan” to get started.

Step 2: Soon it’ll show you a folder/file tree and you can hover your cursor over each block (i.e. a folder). There you can find more details. In this case, I clicked “System” folder to continue.

Step 3: The file breakdown below indicates that some Library and iOS Support files are the culprits.

The interesting part is that the System file size shown in CleanMyMac is much smaller than the size shown in System Information. This puzzles me and makes me believe that Apple definitely has counted some other files (not real system files) in the System category.

What are they? I have no clue, honestly. But as reported by other Mac users who experienced the same issue, they said Apple also considers app caches and iTunes backup files as System files.

Out of curiosity, I ran CleanMyMac again for a quick scan. That app found 13.92 GB in iTunes Junk. Further review revealed that the junk files are old iOS device backups, software updates, broken downloads, etc.

But even after adding this amount to the original system files returned by DaisyDisk, the total size is still a bit less than what’s returned in System Information.

If cleaning the System Storage is still not enough to bring your Mac available disk space to a normal level (i.e. 20% or more), see below.

What Else Can I Do to Reclaim More Disk Space?

There are tons of ways out there. Here are a few of my favorites that should help you get back a decent amount of space quickly.

1. Sort all files by size and delete old large files.

Open Finder, go to Recents, and look at the Size column. Click on it to sort all recent files by file size (from large to small). You’ll have a clear overview of what items are eating up a large amount of space, e.g. From 1 GB to 10 GB, and from 100 MB to 1 GB.

In my MacBook Pro, I found a few large videos that could be transferred to an external drive.

Note: If the Size column doesn’t show up, click on the Settings icon and select Arrange By > Size.

2. Run CleanMyMac.

If you are not a power Mac user, another way to help you quickly locate unnecessary files is using CleanMyMac, an app that won our award for the best Mac cleaner software. As you can also see in my detailed review here, I believe CleanMyMac is a must-have app for all basic users.

3. Remove duplicate files with Gemini 2.

Don’t forget those duplicates and similar files! They can stack up without you being aware of it. Finding them is sometimes time-consuming. That’s what Gemini 2 is designed for. Simply select a few frequently used folders (e.g. Documents, Downloads, etc.) in the main zone of Gemini.

It then scans them and returns all the duplicate files that might be worth removing. Of course, it’s always a good practice to review them before doing so. You can also read our Gemini review here.

Wrapping It Up

Ever since Apple introduced the Optimized Storage feature on macOS Sierra and High Sierra, users got the option of saving space by storing content in the cloud. Apple also has several new tools that make it easy to find and remove unneeded files.

That bar under the Storage tab is beautiful. It does allow you to get a quick overview of what’s taking up the most space on our hard drive. However, it still lacks insights on the “System” category as it’s greyed out.

Hopefully, the guides above have helped you figure out the reasons you’ve got so much “System” data, and most importantly you’ve reclaimed some disk space — especially for new MacBooks pre-installed with flash storage (usually 128 GB or 256 GB) — the storage is so precious!

The development of information technology can be compared with the development of heavy industry. At first, people did not think about the number of emissions and environmental impacts of industrial growth, whereas now, many focused on how to get the same result without polluting the environment, solar panels, automobile electron, etc.

In the world of information technology, we are now at the stage of building an information weight. Every year, the size of the various files: games, videos, photos, etc. increases. Of course, the volume of digital media as well increases, but we can not always have a sufficient amount of the memory to store all of our files still having our devices operating quickly. Thus even for the sake of speed hard drives are actively superseded by SSD and Flash memory, which is much more limited in scope.

Thus, while the technology is not much about reducing the size of the files, users are faced with the need to ensure that they keep on their devices.

The DMG messed up on this one!I would handle Green Slime thusly, after consulting the 3e DMG and MM, as well as the 1e MM:GREEN SLIMESmall OozeHD: 2d10+2 (11 hp)Initiative: -5 (Dex)Speed: 0 ft. I'm thinking The Temple of Oozy Evil(ominous boom).Azz. 5e dmg free. I have found the others marginally usefull, though I don't run a normal setting, but a homebrew.Looking through all these slimes and such makes me want to craft a dungeon based on all the different types, maybe make some variants. Good question!

The situation is aggravated by the fact that in addition to large user files, system and applications often take up space by temporary and unneeded files that hang heavy on your computer.

Mac OS X System is very advanced in terms of increasing the useful area on your Mac, but it still not perfect and eventually accumulates the number of unnecessary information, which is measured in gigabytes.

Today we will tell you how to find this unnecessary information and get rid of it.

User Files

The first thing to check – all your custom folders for the presence of large unnecessary files, such as: videos, games, photo archives, and others.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to find these files. Especially if while working you are not structuring files on your computer. You’ll have to keep an eye on the size of the different folders on your system and try to look for more unwanted files.

You can greatly simplify your work, if you use Disk Expert application, which in convenient form (pie chart) shows what takes place on your hard drive. The app is especially convenient to find files in descending order of size, it will allow you to quickly find unwanted large files (if any), and remove them. Thus, for 2-10 minutes you will be able to free up considerable space on your computer.

Back-ups & Caches

Dmg Taking Up Too Much Space Mac

Further – more complicated. These types of files are inside system folders and are hidden. So again, to look for them will be easier to use Disk Expert. This app shows hidden files and folders. Back-ups will be found simply. They are a complete record of your system, then it will weigh much more average files using Mac OS X. Back-ups could be removed if you have more than one. It is said, that the immediate removal of system files should be done carefully as you may lose a valuable information.

Dmg Taking Up Too Much Space Iphone

Individually caches weigh not much, but the problem is that there are lots of different caches. To remove them we created Clear Disk. It scans all the spots with cache files, you can easily and quickly remove them, without having a fearing to damage the system.

Safely and fully uninstall applications

Dmg Taking Up Too Much Space On Ipad

Read the following article about App Cleaner & Uninstaller app that solves this issue.