MacBook Pro Storage Reporting Bug

[AngelaHornung]

Hello! 

 

So when I go to my storage settings in my MacBook Pro (2021 M1 Pro 16GB 1TB) there is a large chunk of my storage that is just unaccounted for no matter how long I wait for it to load. I've attached a screenshot. It just pops up a window saying calculating. Just curious what's taking up space on my system as I'm pondering off loading some material to the cloud and my upcoming NAS (project not yet complete, will share details when it is as well as photos). Any ideas as to what might be going on and or how to correct it? This machine and the remainder of my Apple devices have been phenomenal, but every so often some weirdness like this happens, not catastrophic just odd.

[Elliot Heasley]

Had this happen once on my school computer (Macbook Air M1, 2020 8GB 128GB), and my administrator had to use some software to clean it up. I was editing videos with Clipchamp, a browser-based editor, which loaded and kept temporary Chrome files that took up all the space. Also had this happen on my desktop computer using the same program, had to manually clean up the temp files. Try looking at the size of the Chrome/Safari folder to see if those are using up a bunch of space.

[AngelaHornung]

2 minutes ago, Elliot Heasley said:

Had this happen once on my school computer (Macbook Air M1, 2020 8GB 128GB), and my administrator had to use some software to clean it up. I was editing videos with Clipchamp, a browser-based editor, which loaded and kept temporary Chrome files that took up all the space. Also had this happen on my desktop computer using the same program, had to manually clean up the temp files. Try looking at the size of the Chrome/Safari folder to see if those are using up a bunch of space.

Like in ~/Library?

[Elliot Heasley]

14 minutes ago, AngelaHornung said:

Like in ~/Library?

Yes, in ~/Library/Caches specifically, and then look for your browser and check the file size. You can also check the older app folders to see if something else is the problem.

[AngelaHornung]

14 minutes ago, Elliot Heasley said:

Yes, in ~/Library/Caches specifically, and then look for your browser and check the file size. You can also check the older app folders to see if something else is the problem.

Cache file was only 8GB, not horrendous. I can look across for others, though why can't Mac OS just see these as system or applications files?

[Elliot Heasley]

36 minutes ago, AngelaHornung said:

Cache file was only 8GB, not horrendous. I can look across for others, though why can't Mac OS just see these as system or applications files?

I'm not sure. That's just one thing I've done before to clean up storage space. You might also try using CCleaner, it's safe and people say it does well on Macs.

[Oak9948]

do you use external drives.

 

macos has some weird bugs with external drives if you put something in your trash it stores on the mac as an invisible file until you plug it back in. so try external drives you’ve used