157 gigabytes of hidden files

[JakeLara]

Hi,

I have one of the original M1 with 16 GB of memory

I'm running sequoia 15.1.1

At the moment I frequently get a pop-up saying

"Your system has run out of application memory"

When I review the memory the user file contains 162 GB

When I open the user file and review its contents it's no more than 5 GB

So I'm assuming I have hidden files that take up 157 GB

Does anyone know how I can find them and delete them

Thanks

 

[DeltaMac]

Make the files visible:
Press Shift+Command+. (period)
All hidden files will be visible.
Toggle the same keys to re-hide those files

 

[NoBoMac]

Application memory message is not related to file space (which, per instruction provided by @DeltaMac, will show Library folder which hold lots of caches, hence most of the 162GB of files space used will be there).

Will need to use Activity Monitor (Finder > Applications > Utilities) and go to the Memory tab to see what process(es) are using up your RAM.

 

[smirking]

I'd also add that it's not very common to run out of application memory. MacOS is very aggressive and very efficient at swapping memory so you always have just enough memory to use. I've done some pretty ludicrous things with very little memory and I've never gotten that "out of application memory" warning message.

Did you run a terminal command to disable swapping? That would make such an error more likely. There's a certain user on this site who tells everyone to disable swapping by running a terminal command. Please don't do that unless you really know what you're doing. If you did that, you should undo it.

 

[Nermal]

How much free space do you have on your SSD?

As for finding where all your space is going, I like using OmniDiskSweeper. There are other tools that can do the same sort of thing, showing exactly where all your big files are.

 

[JakeLara]

Make the files visible:
Press Shift+Command+. (period)
All hidden files will be visible.
Toggle the same keys to re-hide those files

Thank you very much, it was a file labelled diffusionbee. I use the free software to do image generation and either there were some images in there or they are using my computer to store images. Anyway the info said it was 125 gigabytes and no items so I'm not sure what that's all about. I have deleted it and I've got the 125 GB back

 

[Bigwaff]

I have deleted it and I've got the 125 GB back

That’s all good and well but that is not the out of application memory problem.

 

[Nermal]

It could have been, if the SSD was close to full.

 

[JakeLara]

Make the files visible:
Press Shift+Command+. (period)
All hidden files will be visible.
Toggle the same keys to re-hide those files

Thanks I found it, it was a diffusionbee file