Storage · disk almost full
Your Mac storage is full: what to delete first
Work from what regenerates to what is yours: empty the Trash, clear caches and build output, restart, then look at large files and downloads. Leave the Photos library and Application Support alone until last, and use their own tools when you get there.
Why it is urgent
A nearly full disk is not just an inconvenience. macOS needs free space to write swap when memory runs short, to stage software updates, and to save the files you are working on, so a Mac with almost nothing free gets slow and then starts refusing to do things. Getting a few gigabytes back quickly matters more than getting everything back at once.
The order to work in
- Empty the Trash. Files you moved there still take up space until it is emptied, and that includes anything a cleaner moved there for you.
- Clear caches. Everything in
~/Library/Cachesregenerates. Quit apps first. Details in how to clear the cache on a Mac. - Delete build output, if you write code. Xcode's DerivedData and old simulator runtimes are often the largest single items on a developer's Mac, and package caches (npm, CocoaPods, Gradle, Homebrew) come straight back on the next install.
- Check what AI tools have left behind. Coding agents and desktop AI apps keep build trees, runtimes and update downloads out of sight — where they keep it, and what can go.
- Restart. It clears most of macOS's temporary folder and the swap files, which no amount of deleting can do safely while the Mac is running.
- Large files and Downloads. Installers you have already run, videos, disk images. These are yours, so look before deleting, or move them to another drive.
What not to delete in a hurry
- The Photos library. Deleting or moving it in Finder can lose photos. Turn on Optimize Mac Storage in Photos' iCloud settings instead.
~/Library/Application Support. For many apps this is the data, not a copy of it.- iPhone and iPad backups, unless the device also backs up to iCloud or you have a newer one.
- Anything under
/System, which macOS protects anyway.
What to expect
On the Mac this app was built on, the same order took the disk from 138 MB free to about 28 GB on 26 August 2026, and from 275 MB to 19 GB on 11 September — almost all of it from build output, caches and AI tool leftovers, and none of it from personal files. Your numbers will be different; the order is what carries over.
If the free space comes back and then disappears again within days, something is regenerating it. Package caches and AI tool runtimes are the usual cause, and a regular clean is the answer, not a bigger purge. For the longer list of places to look, see how to free up space on a Mac.
Where the app comes in
RefreshYourMac measures all of these at once, sorts them by the four safety levels, and lets you clean the ones that regenerate in one go while holding back the ones that are yours. Its menu bar panel warns when the disk passes 85% full, and it can clean the safe categories automatically when free space drops below a level you set.