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avz

macrumors 68000
Oct 7, 2018
1,829
1,896
Stalingrad, Russia
In the OPs case "Other" was the Mac OS Install data which can be deleted as he did successfully in post#4 above.

Your "Other" may be that or something else.

The About this Mac > Storage bar chart takes a while to fully categorise everything.....have you tried leaving it to see if "Other" gets replaced? After leaving mine for a few minutes I dont have any "Other".
Big Sur is definitely became around 20GB more bloated than Mojave or even Catalina(or any other older Mac OS). Nobody seems to be able to provide an information on usefulness of the loosing 20GB of your HDD for no apparent reason.
On my M1 Mac out of 256GB SSD 55Gb occupied mostly just by Big Sur as I only have about 5GB of my data. I turned off Time Machine and can't find any APFS snapshots which could have possibly explained the occupied extra space.
 

avz

macrumors 68000
Oct 7, 2018
1,829
1,896
Stalingrad, Russia
Other over the years I believe are one two things:

1. Internet Cache
2. InTel app translation cache!
So M1 Macs can carry around 20GB of the cache related to the Intel translation/emulation? But my Intel Macs with Big Sur also lost 20GB of the HDD space. I went back to Sierra and regained 20GB instantly.
 

satcomer

Suspended
Feb 19, 2008
9,115
1,977
The Finger Lakes Region
So M1 Macs can carry around 20GB of the cache related to the Intel translation/emulation? But my Intel Macs with Big Sur also lost 20GB of the HDD space. I went back to Sierra and regained 20GB instantly.
Yes! Intel cache is huge now so try to use universals or native apps in future! It seems Intel translation uses a lot of cache! So in future it's better to delete your Internet cache about once every two weeks!
 
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