"Other" storage issues

[Ruffian829]

Hi all,

I purchased a macbook air last August and it has 120GB of storage. Considering I do 99% photos and basic internet browsing with nothing else on my laptop, I figured this would be fine. Admittedly, my photo library is big, it says 38.58 gb. BUT, "other" is taking up 47.79GB. I am so confused as to what this "other" is. I have downloaded CleanMyMac3 and it did not help (in fact, my Other seemed to increase after use).

Any suggestions here? I am still using the photo stream on photos, not iCloud / photo storage... would that make any difference? I have no idea how to free up space here. I haven't really downloaded any apps, I don't do much else on my macbook.

I'm desperate for help here, I have "no space" left on a relatively new/very lightly used computer. I can't even download and install Sierra...

 

[thats all folks]

do you use an email client? messages? how big is your downloads folder? you might want to invest in a tool, something like DaisyDisk.

 

[Ruffian829]

Thank you, I downloaded DaisyDisk. I deleted the email client and through DaisyDisk realized I still needed to delete the cache (7gb) so I've done that. I do use messages (6gb) so I'm going to delete those as well. Downloads folder was already nearly empty.

A lot of other space seems to be taken by ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.photos.cloud
... messing with this seems to be beyond my expertise (which I dare say is from from expert anything, I'm very basic level here)

Would purchasing iCloud storage and turning on my iCloud sync and such help here??