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"Purgeable" space is killing my Mac

Fishrrman said:
Marco wrote:
"I use a shell script to manually delete Time Machine snapshots."

Heh.
The better way is to not use time machine at all.

I've never used it, not once, ever.
I use either SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner instead.

No snapshots to bother with...
Click to expand...

I get your point: I use ChronoSync for backups. Time Machine is in theory a nice addition to a backup arsenal, though. Another issue with Time Machine, in my opinion, is that it "stresses" the disk: meaning reading/writing almost continuously something. It's part of the versioning backup strategy after all. This is especially evident with SSD.
 
kirbyrun said:
Now it's not letting me delete this last one. But I seem to have 100GB free space, so I'm going to try reinstalling. Wish me luck! See you on the other side.
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If this helps?

But I think after deleting such much Spotlight should be calm. As far as I remember on my old MacBook this happened when I got deleted round about 300 to 400 GB.
 
I use Daisy Disk and it recovers purgeable space. I think it has a 7-day or 14-day trial as well. Could try that.

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Well, to everyone who has been kind enough to offer help... I've got plenty of SSD space now, I've reinstalled Tahoe...and once again, corespotlightd is mucking things up. I was so certain the problem was SSD space, but Disk Utility shows 370GB free.

Back to square one. At this point, I can only blame 26.5. Does anyone know how to downgrade?
 
kirbyrun said:
Well, to everyone who has been kind enough to offer help... I've got plenty of SSD space now, I've reinstalled Tahoe...and once again, corespotlightd is mucking things up. I was so certain the problem was SSD space, but Disk Utility shows 370GB free.

Back to square one. At this point, I can only blame 26.5. Does anyone know how to downgrade?
Click to expand...
Tahoe is the culprit. Its awful. I had it and ended up downgrading to latest Sequoia 15.7.7. Back to being productive without issues.

Backup all your data. Then you can easily erase your entire Mac and restore to MacOS Sequoia. Just Google instructions.
 
kirbyrun said:
. At this point, I can only blame 26.5. Does anyone know how to downgrade?
Click to expand...
Can't tell. I haven't installed the update yet. But usually when enough space is free and trash is also empty then Spotlight should be absolutely calm. Back in 2015 it was this case when I deleted about 300 GB.

Sorry. Forgot something. Did you try to delete Spotlight index via Terminal? This might also help.
 
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conmee said:
I use Daisy Disk and it recovers purgeable space. I think it has a 7-day or 14-day trial as well. Could try that.

View attachment 2630566View attachment 2630567View attachment 2630568View attachment 2630569View attachment 2630570
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Wow ... this ... works... I had a massive 450+GB purgeable space growing since the day I got my 16' MBP in 2022. Started out small and kept growing every time I upgraded. And I'm watching it right now purge almost 500GB - something I've spent hours to try to figure out how to do (did not want to reinstall from scratch).

I have a 4TB SSD and was only using a small portion of that so it wasn't bad but still bothered me.

Thank you for this post. You made my month!

I did have to follow the link and use my App Store version to get a free non-App store version for this to work.

Edit: Don't be surprised if Mac OS claws some of that back right after you purge it (back up to 20GB - but sure beats 450GB).
 
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By the way. While you are all talking about this.

Do you remember the Time Machine like feature to go back to an old state of a file? How was it called? "Versions"?

Back in 2015 it drove me nuts! Honestly! Taking too much time, makes your machine really hot and whatever issues there occured.

Found back then a Terminal command that erased all of these old file states. Is this still used by macOS even when not using backup Time Machine?
 
boppin said:
By the way. While you are all talking about this.

Do you remember the Time Machine like feature to go back to an old state of a file? How was it called? "Versions"?

Back in 2015 it drove me nuts! Honestly! Taking too much time, makes your machine really hot and whatever issues there occured.

Found back then a Terminal command that erased all of these old file states. Is this still used by macOS even when not using backup Time Machine?
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Yes. I have never used Time Machine, the versions menu is present in TextEdit
"View and restore past versions of documents on Mac"
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/view-and-restore-past-versions-of-documents-mh40710/mac

What Terminal command disabled it?

Versions.jpg
 
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bogdanw said:
What Terminal command disabled it?
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Iiiiik! 🫩😰🤢

If I remember correctly this one:

defaults write -g ApplePersistence -bool no

It should be able to disable that without any commands in Terminal by using system preferences.
 
kirbyrun said:
…
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Have you tried dumping your Preferences folder?

It sounds a little silly, but when a problem resurfaces between complete system wipes and re-installs, and the problem resurfaces after the user account is restored, a corrupted preference file tends to be the culprit.

There's a few easy ways to test this, most of which involve logging in from another user account. I would follow these steps…

1. Create a new user account with admin privileges (name it `Debug` or something)
2. log in under that account
3. open a Finder window, click `Go` in the menu, hold the `option` key, and click `Library`
4. move the `Preferences` folder to your desktop
5. reboot and log into the normal account

You will find that all your OS settings — and all non-sandboxed app settings — have been reset to new/factory conditions. This isn't as much trouble to sort out as it sounds like.

Use the account for a few hours or a day or two. If everything seems fine, just delete the `Debug` account and kiss your old Preferences goodbye.

If the problem resumes, this whole diagnosis was wrong, so you might as well log back into `Debug` and put your Preferences back.

(Don't worry about sandboxed prefs, that's all third-party and it's difficult to imagine a circumstance where that could be causing this… it has to be some system level thing)
 
I feel like, to the uninitiated, it sounds like destroying the village to save it. But cherry-picking preferences is a fool’s errand.
 
Eric_WVGG said:
I feel like, to the uninitiated, it sounds like destroying the village to save it. But cherry-picking preferences is a fool’s errand.
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Excuse me.

Are you talking about me?

As far as I remember Apple support suggest this sometimes. So I really don't get your point. I am confused.
 
I meant the thread creator. I have no idea what his experience — nor yours — is like, and with all things technical I think it’s helpful to assume that everyone is starting from nothing.
 
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Eric_WVGG said:
Have you tried dumping your Preferences folder?

It sounds a little silly, but when a problem resurfaces between complete system wipes and re-installs, and the problem resurfaces after the user account is restored, a corrupted preference file tends to be the culprit.

There's a few easy ways to test this, most of which involve logging in from another user account. I would follow these steps…

1. Create a new user account with admin privileges (name it `Debug` or something)
2. log in under that account
3. open a Finder window, click `Go` in the menu, hold the `option` key, and click `Library`
4. move the `Preferences` folder to your desktop
5. reboot and log into the normal account

You will find that all your OS settings — and all non-sandboxed app settings — have been reset to new/factory conditions. This isn't as much trouble to sort out as it sounds like.

Use the account for a few hours or a day or two. If everything seems fine, just delete the `Debug` account and kiss your old Preferences goodbye.

If the problem resumes, this whole diagnosis was wrong, so you might as well log back into `Debug` and put your Preferences back.

(Don't worry about sandboxed prefs, that's all third-party and it's difficult to imagine a circumstance where that could be causing this… it has to be some system level thing)
Click to expand...
The problem persists when I’m logged in under a different account, so we’re pretty sure it’s not a prefs issue. But I’ll have the advisor mention it to the engineer.
 
Dang. That sucks.

There is a `/Library/Preferences` folder that manages system-wide prefs, I’ve never seen nuking it fix anything, but it is a super-easy test.

Good luck.
 
T
Eric_WVGG said:
Dang. That sucks.

There is a `/Library/Preferences` folder that manages system-wide prefs, I’ve never seen nuking it fix anything, but it is a super-easy test.

Good luck.
Click to expand...
Thanks! The issue's been escalated to engineering, so I've got my fingers crossed. Though what I'm fearing, as WWDC approaches, is a response like, "Yep, we see the problem. It'll be fixed in macOS 27..."
 
Eric_WVGG said:
There is a `/Library/Preferences` folder that manages system-wide prefs, I’ve never seen nuking it fix anything
Click to expand...
Be careful what you delete in there!

You can care your system or make it truly disapoble!

Do only delete files and folders in there when you exactly know what are doing!

Even when macOS let's you.

I remember that deleting private var something could be deleted but then your system is forever damaged.
 
So to answer one question. Downgrading is a royal pain in the ... I'm thinking best route is to create and test an external bootable clone. Now download the earlier version you want to install and place it on an external drive. Then boot from recovery, do a complete erase and pick the external installer as your source. Once you are booted then you can migrate from the clone. Hopefully the portions of the latest and greatest OS which are causing the issue won't come along for the ride. Ideally the time to do that external clone is before running the update.

If anyone has an easier or safer route please shout out very loudly.

Personally I don't use TimeMachine and I disable Spotlight. They are resource hogs and I get along fine without them.
 
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OldMacs4Me said:
So to answer one question. Downgrading is a royal pain in the ... I'm thinking best route is to create and test an external bootable clone. Now download the earlier version you want to install and place it on an external drive. Then boot from recovery, do a complete erase and pick the external installer as your source. Once you are booted then you can migrate from the clone. Hopefully the portions of the latest and greatest OS which are causing the issue won't come along for the ride. Ideally the time to do that external clone is before running the update.

If anyone has an easier or safer route please shout out very loudly.

Personally I don't use TimeMachine and I disable Spotlight. They are resource hogs and I get along fine without them.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I looked through the downgrade process and...woof. For now, I'm coping as I wait for Apple Engineering to get back to me.
 
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