Boot Camp Assistant app hidden and barely launches on Apple Silicon. Any way to force it to run SOLELY for purging disk space?

[izzy0242mr]

This is NOT a post about how to dual boot Windows on an Apple Silicon Mac. I realize that is not possible at this time.

However, one cool thing that not everyone knows about the Boot Camp Assistant app is that when it first starts up and you click Next/Continue and advance to the next stage (i.e., before you choose any options for partitioning your disk), it runs some disk cleanup functions. Ever seen that parenthetical next to your hard drive storage saying "100 GB free (20 GB purgeable)"? Starting the Boot Camp Assistant purges that purgeable data.

The Boot Camp Assistant.app IS included with Apple Silicon Macs…but it's just hidden. If you set Finder to view hidden files, it shows up in Utilities. But it will refuse to launch at all initially. If you check "Rosetta" in the Get Info page, it will open with an error.

My question is whether there's a way to bypass that error, just for curiosity's sake? Perhaps some .xml / config / plist file that will force it to run?

Alternatively, is there a simple, single Terminal command or something that one can run to instantly clear purgeable space?

 

[Bigwaff]

Alternatively, is there a simple, single Terminal command or something that one can run to instantly clear purgeable space?

Boot Safe Mode to clear caches and use Disk Utility to delete snapshots.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

Safe Mode will do what you ask. But my question is, why do you want to do that? These caches don’t exist just to annoy you - they improve the overall performance of macOS. The reason Boot Camp Assistant clears them, is to ensure adequate space for your Windows partition, which as you note is irrelevant on Apple Silicon.