How much actual free space on the 256 GB SSD (M1)?

[neuralengine]

Would someone be able to post how much storage is available out of the box on the M1 MacBook Air (with a clean install) with the 256GB SSD?

Thinking of ordering the base model but not sure whether to bump the storage to 512. It'll be a secondary computer so I don't need to fit everything in on it, just want to figure out how much actual space there is to play with.

 

[Chevyguy2021]

Free for me is like 203gb (I think) Fresh machine, new Mac, with a software update applie and stock apps updated in the App Store.

 

[Apple_Robert]

Thanks for asking the question. As someone who is considering getting a M1 early next year, this is good information to have.

 

[EastHillWill]

Here's mine, M1 MBA. So I guess the answer is 251 or 245, depending on how you read it

 

[Quackers]

I was curious too but for a slightly different reason.
The iFixit teardown (I think it was) seems to suggest that the SSD is made up of 2 seperate chips, one of 128GB and the second of 140GB - all of which sounded curious.

 

[Macsthebest]

Looks like macOS Monterey might do a better job at managing HDD space upon installation. Here's mine right after upgrading BigSur to the latest Beta on a brand new M1 MacBook Air. Just did a regular Software Update after enrolling on the Beta program.

 

[MausKriminel]

Looks like macOS Monterey might do a better job at managing HDD space upon installation. Here's mine right after upgrading BigSur to the latest Beta on a brand new M1 MacBook Air. Just did a regular Software Update after enrolling on the Beta program.
View attachment 1872374

Can confirm! I got almost 15 gigs of more space after updating to Monterey. Also note that after updating to 12.0 I reset my Mac using the inbuilt reset function.

 

[steve217]

Looks like macOS Monterey might do a better job at managing HDD space upon installation. Here's mine right after upgrading BigSur to the latest Beta on a brand new M1 MacBook Air. Just did a regular Software Update after enrolling on the Beta program.
View attachment 1872374

I’ll second these results - I had about 220GB after installing Monterey to a 256GB Mac mini. I thought that was a tiny footprint. After I installed Office, I was down to 186GB.

 

[Zazoh]

Showing 15.69 GB for the MacOS. (Monterey)

Xcode takes more than that with Caches.