Purgeable data?

[dbrewood]

Looking at the 'Mackintosh HD Info' it shows Available 322.55 GB (230.07 purgeable). Can anyone advise what that purgeable data is and how would one go about purging it to get the disk space back?

See screenshot for full info as to what is shown.

 

[Brian33]

I think for most people with large amounts of purgeable space, it is very likely made up of Time Machine "local snapshots." These are supposed to be automatically thinned (deleted) to free up more storage whenever it's needed, but it seems like there are bugs or problems with this process for a bunch of people. I haven't found authoritative info about when or how these snapshots are (supposedly) automatically deleted.

Here's an Apple page that describes local snapshots and how to delete them yourself by turning off Time Machine temporarily:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204015

One could also use the 'tmutil thinlocalsnapshots' command, but the above procedure is probably easier.

 

[dbrewood]

Thanks muchly, I'll do a clean up shortly.