my old macbook air running sierra (last proper stable os in a while) would reach over 100 days uptime
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I.T. GUY NEW TO MAC - INCREASING DISK USED SPACE - WHY ?
- Thread starter dgian
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No. As an IT Guy, I'm sure you don't routinely restart any of your other devices that contain embedded CPUs--printers, microwave ovens, refrigerators, washing machines, smart speakers, smart phones, tablets, televisions, watches, and so on. Your Mac is no different. It only truly needs to restart for software updates.
Bitdefender for Mac is atrocious. Bitdefender itself is pretty much a standard these days for detecting malware, but their Mac software is pretty horrendous and way more resource intensive than Malwarebytes. The reason I recommend Malwarebytes is because years ago they acquired AdwareMedic and that was one of the best anti-malware apps for the Mac at the time, which lends to its incredibly low resources and insanely quick scan times. I use BitDefender on Windows but the Mac app is just an awful experience. I mean, on the M1, you’re not likely to notice the fact that Bitdefender is more resource intensive because the M1 is incredibly fast, I just really hate how the company approaches ransomware protection on the Mac. It’s not very intuitive. If you generally prefer the software it’s not going to ruin the fluid Mac experience by any means.
I never restart my macs. The only exceptions are the rare system crashes (once or twice a year), and operating system updates. Otherwise, they're always on - either in use, or in sleep.
Don't. Caches are there to speed things up. The reply above about not micromanaging this stuff is spot on. It's a waste of your time to worry about all this. Any modern OS will store preferences, caches etc and manage it really very well. If you were down to something like 10gig free and couldnt move things off the drive? Then it's worth looking into all of this to see what you could do (aside from buy another Mac), but right now you're worrying about it for now real reason.
Oh and restarting is fine (it won't hurt the mac... seriously?) but it's not needed.
PS: AV software is a waste of resources on the Mac. I've used Macs on and off (mostly on) since they came out. I started useing OS X 10.0 in beta because the CTO of the startup i was working at was a huge fan. In all that time I've never used any kind of AV software and I've never had any kind of malware infection.
it's not impossible, but almost all of the malware stuff I've seen for the Mac is either highly targeted (state actors against opposition, etc), installed by clicking and installing suspicious software or requires physical access to the machine.
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A little tidbit that I've observed anecdotally is that macOS seems to treat modern SSDs differently than it treated my platter based hard drives in the past. If you're feeling adventurous, try this sometime:
* Take note of how much space is available on your drive,
* Create a particularly large file, such as a disk image,
* Note again the space available, and
* Drop that file in the trash and empty the trash.
* Note one more time the space available.
When I've done similar activities, I've noticed that the available space on my SSD isn't always returned to its previous levels after deleting the large file; in fact, depending upon various factors, it might not change at all after the deletion.
More interestingly, if I subsequently open the BootCamp installer (which probably isn't an option for you on your newer M1 Mac) and start to go through the motions of preparing to install Windows, one of the preparation steps will force a disk cleanup routine to run and I'll abruptly get back the space that had been allocated for the deleted file, and potentially other space as well.
So what can we learn from this peculiar anecdote? Well, one thing we might learn is that not all disk cleanup operations happen immediately, even those associated with file deletions; sometimes, macOS waits until there's an actual reason to perform those cleanup ops. Other times, macOS probably waits until there's clearly no user activity, so as not to eat up processor cycles that the user might prefer to use for something else.
This kind of behavior isn't necessarily intuitive to someone who has already formed the habit of suspiciously eyeing every technical detail of the computer's activities, as most any competent Windows user is likely to do. This highly vigilant monitoring becomes second nature to Windows users... because quite frankly, there are far too many reasons to not trust Windows. You're forced to second guess things all the time, whether through Microsoft showing you a wall of checkboxes which all ask in different ways how much of your freedom and privacy you're willing to give up, or through the actions of third party software, some of which could very well be far more malicious than those checkboxes. But the macOS behavior could be viewed as perfectly reasonable behavior, if you're willing to accept that it is doing these things as part of an attempt to make the user experience better, and thereby start learning to trust your computer, for a change.
I know... it's hard. Personally I use Macs, Windows and even Linux for various tasks in my own home, and those Windows boxes still give me pause now and then -- and of course, that skepticism creeps into my observations of my Macs as well, as a result. (How else would I have noticed my own disk space anecdote, right?) But, IMHO, learning to trust your computer a little bit more is an integral part of the whole Mac experience.
So, to echo one of the sentiments offered by others in this thread: I would recommend that you try to worry a little less, so that you can enjoy your Mac a little more.
(Apologies for the long-winded commentary, but hopefully you got something useful out of it.)
* Take note of how much space is available on your drive,
* Create a particularly large file, such as a disk image,
* Note again the space available, and
* Drop that file in the trash and empty the trash.
* Note one more time the space available.
When I've done similar activities, I've noticed that the available space on my SSD isn't always returned to its previous levels after deleting the large file; in fact, depending upon various factors, it might not change at all after the deletion.
More interestingly, if I subsequently open the BootCamp installer (which probably isn't an option for you on your newer M1 Mac) and start to go through the motions of preparing to install Windows, one of the preparation steps will force a disk cleanup routine to run and I'll abruptly get back the space that had been allocated for the deleted file, and potentially other space as well.
So what can we learn from this peculiar anecdote? Well, one thing we might learn is that not all disk cleanup operations happen immediately, even those associated with file deletions; sometimes, macOS waits until there's an actual reason to perform those cleanup ops. Other times, macOS probably waits until there's clearly no user activity, so as not to eat up processor cycles that the user might prefer to use for something else.
This kind of behavior isn't necessarily intuitive to someone who has already formed the habit of suspiciously eyeing every technical detail of the computer's activities, as most any competent Windows user is likely to do. This highly vigilant monitoring becomes second nature to Windows users... because quite frankly, there are far too many reasons to not trust Windows. You're forced to second guess things all the time, whether through Microsoft showing you a wall of checkboxes which all ask in different ways how much of your freedom and privacy you're willing to give up, or through the actions of third party software, some of which could very well be far more malicious than those checkboxes. But the macOS behavior could be viewed as perfectly reasonable behavior, if you're willing to accept that it is doing these things as part of an attempt to make the user experience better, and thereby start learning to trust your computer, for a change.
I know... it's hard. Personally I use Macs, Windows and even Linux for various tasks in my own home, and those Windows boxes still give me pause now and then -- and of course, that skepticism creeps into my observations of my Macs as well, as a result. (How else would I have noticed my own disk space anecdote, right?) But, IMHO, learning to trust your computer a little bit more is an integral part of the whole Mac experience.
So, to echo one of the sentiments offered by others in this thread: I would recommend that you try to worry a little less, so that you can enjoy your Mac a little more.
(Apologies for the long-winded commentary, but hopefully you got something useful out of it.)
Eh? Just force a spotlight reindex by adding a folder & removing it in Spotlight (sys preferences) or go to about, storage & view files that usually does the trick of getting space back. Failing all of that a reboot would do it.
Where did you learn IT, did you say? I think you need to be more careful in your selection of sources.
I hear you, but that's not the point that I was trying to make... the point is, you don't have to know or do any of that, in order to enjoy a problem free Mac.
You're not in Redmond anymore. so No. you could, but there is no benefit. I go to battery on settings (weird to me to call power adapter battery, but oh well), I make sure it can put my disks to sleep (more for attached HDDs than anything else, and turn of wake up on network only because I am superstitious about it, I once had a computer turn on while asleep when I was traveling, got really hot, that is a bad thing), so I make sure it is off. Of course you are required to power off for flying - I do that. Other than that I only power off when I do a big update (I used to use windows, so you always have to shut down and restart, just an old habit
I haven't used a Windows machine for a while, and I hate to give IT advice to a pro, but if you look at the left side of your keyboard there's a key labeled "caps lock" that has a little light in it. If you ensure that light is turned off when you start typing you'll get the usual use of your shift key back and it won't look so much like you're screaming.
For someone new to mac who may be down to their last 10GB of free space on a 256GB drive who empties trash & doesn't get space back you might though. You've offered a solution (anecdotally or not) to a not entirely unique problem that cannot work with the machine the OP has.
As for not having to worry about stuff, this was one of the most annoying gremlins I experienced & would've been glad to know the solution when I came (& still) come across it and I say this with a 1TB drive.
Howdy dgian,
If you see the drive rapidly filling up, something is wrong, but your images show that you still have ~215GBs available, so everything looks fine. Things like caches and logs will grow, but macOS will intelligently manage it, so no need to worry. With regards to malware, you will find all sorts of opinions on here about it. Some folks have opinions founded on experience, while others off of Internet lore. Apple has built-in protection, and if you stick to the Apple Mac Store, and take care where you surf, you should be fine without installing a 3rd party anti-virus program. When Apple starts recommending you use Anti-Virus program, that is when I will start using them on my Mac.
macOS - Security
macOS is designed with powerful, advanced technologies that work together to keep your Mac and built-in apps more private and more secure.
www.apple.com
macOS is started out as NeXSTEP OS, itself a BSD-based UNIX distribution. If you read-up on UNIX (and for the most part GNU/Linux), you can learn how logs and caches are handled, it will get you a long way towards understanding how things work.
Good luck!
Rich S.
Too funny. I usually apologize for yelling after I type with the caps lock on. Super seriously, most people don’t get it. Excelsior! (South Park reference)
might want to test out free trial of cocktail for Monterey.
A system Cache cleaner
See if that helps
www.maintain.se
A system Cache cleaner
See if that helps
Cocktail - A perfect mixture for macOS
Cocktail is a general purpose utility for macOS that lets you clean, repair and optimize your Mac. It is a powerful digital toolset that helps hundreds of thousands of Mac users around the world get the most out of their computers every day.
Cleaning up caches isn’t really the users responsibility on MacOS. The operating system manages all of that itself
I should grow some skin if I'm posting in forums
sorry for my overreaction. And sorry for immediately going for the worst interpretation.
A very useful app you might want to try is DaisyDisk - it regular appears on lists of people's 'must have' utility apps.
Although there's a paid licence (which IMHO is worth it), the free time-unlimited trial level gives you plenty of functionality, including being able to easily see what's using precious SSD space.
Although there's a paid licence (which IMHO is worth it), the free time-unlimited trial level gives you plenty of functionality, including being able to easily see what's using precious SSD space.
It was not my intent to offer a solution to the problem that I was describing -- as we have already established, it was only an anecdote to illustrate a point. However, I would also hasten to point out that your own anecdote about someone who is down to their last 10GB also happens to be a slight mismatch to the OP's scenario: As noted by other posters, he still has plenty of drive space, at the moment Thankfully, when he does reach his last 10GB, he can refer back to this thread, as you happen to have already offered him a solution which might work for his Mac. So it's all good, right?
That said: I will acknowledge that it might have been more reasonable to append the world "Typically..." to my previous comment about not needing to do that stuff. Gremlins crop up no matter what you're using... I just happen to feel that they crop up less frequently when I'm using macOS, as compared to when I'm using Windows.
Under normal circumstances caches don’t need cleanup.
How to use safe mode on your Mac
Edit: Just checked and safe mode didn't clear out the caches. So never mind.
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