I hope this helps somebody in the future...
I have been brutalized for years now by hidden system data. I had 724 gigs of that **** sitting someplace on my Mac, and nothing I've tried has even revealed the location of that data, let alone cleaned it up. I've tried every solution I could find in this and other forums plus a couple different Mac-cleaning tools—all with little to no effect.
After yet another morning of wondering what else I could possibly delete to eke out a little more space, on a lark, I opened Claude Code and asked if it could help. Claude diagnosed that my hidden albatross was almost entirely document-revision back-ups, primarily of photos. (I'm a professional photographer.) That entire cache is hidden, not just from us, but also from any Mac cleaning tool we can buy. It talked me through the process of cleaning that cache in the Terminal app—and presto—561 gigs are now once again available. It's like getting a whole new computer. We hit a few other trouble spots and now my storage is 29% full, instead of 93%, which is where I started my morning.
The process itself was complex and Claude did much of the work for me, so I can't really talk you through it myself. Instead, my advice to anybody in the same boat is this: spend $20 for a single month of Claude Pro (which includes Claude Code), and set it to work on the problem.
Suck it, CleanMyMac.
I have been brutalized for years now by hidden system data. I had 724 gigs of that **** sitting someplace on my Mac, and nothing I've tried has even revealed the location of that data, let alone cleaned it up. I've tried every solution I could find in this and other forums plus a couple different Mac-cleaning tools—all with little to no effect.
After yet another morning of wondering what else I could possibly delete to eke out a little more space, on a lark, I opened Claude Code and asked if it could help. Claude diagnosed that my hidden albatross was almost entirely document-revision back-ups, primarily of photos. (I'm a professional photographer.) That entire cache is hidden, not just from us, but also from any Mac cleaning tool we can buy. It talked me through the process of cleaning that cache in the Terminal app—and presto—561 gigs are now once again available. It's like getting a whole new computer. We hit a few other trouble spots and now my storage is 29% full, instead of 93%, which is where I started my morning.
The process itself was complex and Claude did much of the work for me, so I can't really talk you through it myself. Instead, my advice to anybody in the same boat is this: spend $20 for a single month of Claude Pro (which includes Claude Code), and set it to work on the problem.
Suck it, CleanMyMac.
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