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How to refresh "free space"?

Astrohunter

Astrohunter

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 16, 2021
478
315
Hi,

I've removed over 100GB of files from my Mac, tried restarting it, but in Finder and system settings it keeps saying that I've 295GB space left all the time.

Is there some terminal command or some way to refresh it??

Thanks in advance
 
Astrohunter said:
Hi,

I've removed over 100GB of files from my Mac, tried restarting it, but in Finder and system settings it keeps saying that I've 295GB space left all the time.

Is there some terminal command or some way to refresh it??

Thanks in advance
Click to expand...
I am having the same issue. I have removed 7 old Lightroom backups and probably 100+ photos from Photos and there is no change to my available space. I have emptied the trash, restarted, etc. What are we missing here or does the Space allotment not adjust when you delete?
 
webbga said:
I am having the same issue. I have removed 7 old Lightroom backups and probably 100+ photos from Photos and there is no change to my available space. I have emptied the trash, restarted, etc. What are we missing here or does the Space allotment not adjust when you delete?
Click to expand...
Seems like it suddenly changed for me, now it shows 390GB left instead of 295GB.
 
I'm writing this from memory, but run this to get a list of snapshots:

tmutil listlocalsnapshots /

This will give a list of snapshots with their timestamps. Delete each one individually.

sudo tmutil deletelocalsnapshots 2025-10-04-123456

The space will probably pop back when you delete the final one.
 
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Nermal said:
I'm writing this from memory, but run this to get a list of snapshots:

tmutil listlocalsnapshots /

This will give a list of snapshots with their timestamps. Delete each one individually.

sudo tmutil deletelocalsnapshots 2025-10-04-123456

The space will probably pop back when you delete the final one.
Click to expand...
There is also tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates /

If you want to delete all snapshots:
Bash: 
tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates / | grep 20 | while read f; do tmutil deletelocalsnapshots $f; done
 
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Astrohunter said:
Hi,

I've removed over 100GB of files from my Mac, tried restarting it, but in Finder and system settings it keeps saying that I've 295GB space left all the time.

Is there some terminal command or some way to refresh it??

Thanks in advance
Click to expand...
Apple's APFS uses "snapshots" to capture point-in-time images of the file system. These don't take much space and is really just an accounting trick that modern file systems can do.

Even if you empty the trash, the filesystem snapshot is still there. You really do have the space but it will not show until the snapshot is deleted. macOS will automatically delete snapshots when it needs the space.

If it makes you feel good to see a larger free space reported, you can manually delete the snapshots BEFORE macOS needs the space. But the only effect is that you feel better seeing the bigger numbers.
 
Hi,

macOS sometimes doesn’t immediately update free space due to system caches or “purgeable” storage. You can try:
  1. Empty Trash.
  2. Restart in Safe Mode (hold Shift during boot) to clear caches.
  3. Use Terminal to check disk usage:
sudo du -h -d 1 /
  1. Disk Utility → First Aid on your drive.
This usually refreshes the displayed free space.
 
NoBoMac said:
Don't worry about it. You do have the extra space and the OS will handle freeing it up when it needs it.

Click to expand...
Unfortunately the "automatic cleanup" doesn't happen when the space is used up too quickly. For example, if you have 150 GB of free space and 100 GB of snapshots, then in theory you can easily store another 200 GB without issues. If you do this slowly, then it's fine. But if you, say, export a 200 GB ProRes video, you'll run out of space because the video is being exported more quickly than the snapshots are getting removed.
 
Nermal said:
Unfortunately the "automatic cleanup" doesn't happen when the space is used up too quickly. For example, if you have 150 GB of free space and 100 GB of snapshots, then in theory you can easily store another 200 GB without issues. If you do this slowly, then it's fine. But if you, say, export a 200 GB ProRes video, you'll run out of space because the video is being exported more quickly than the snapshots are getting removed.
Click to expand...
I had 295GB left, had one folder with 100GB of movies, removed it but it wouldn’t refresh for quite some time.

Kind of lame
 
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