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Storage amount way off, endless system data calculating

I tried to exercise a little more patience. Initially it was unable to calculate System Data even after Apple Intelligence was enabled but I just left it to settle for a longer time. When I saw that System Data amount was finally able to calculate I let it like that for some more time before disabling Apple Intelligence and it looks like it is still OK even when Apple Intelligence is off. Initially when Storage menu is opened it looks like System Data is 44 GB and Applications is 53 GB - then in few minutes System Data changes to 24 GB and Applications to 73 GB and it does not change after that.

It is not just "cosmetical" problem as if system is unable to categorize some of used storage space it can mark it as purgeable - which does not look like desirable situation...
 
Well - after even longer waiting the amount of purgeable data increased from 6 GB to 50 GB and calculated System Data is all over the place - I have seen 44 GB, 26 GB, 4 GB, 2 GB and even less than 400 MB and long "calculations" in between.

Even when you're not a beta tester you still have a feature carrying BETA label on its' icon and what makes Storage calculation endlessly hallucinating. One possible way to see it all is that Apple Intelligence introduces over 40 GB of stuff, which will be marked as purgeable after turning Apple Intelligence off.

We all have been turned into beta testers...
 
nmt1900 said:
Looks like it got broken again - after cleaning out tens of gigabytes of downloaded dynamic screensavers from the com.apple.idleassetsd cache... and now enabling or disabling Apple Intelligence does not help any more :)
Click to expand...
I know that folder. 20gb of screensavers! They are so pretty though. 😆
 
Too good to be true. Stayed this way for a long time---until today. went from 94 to 34, back to endless calculating. No response from Apple.

and now back up to 96. calculating stopped. will these guys ever get their act together?

and now waaaay down to 16gb. this is just silly.
 
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Ugh, I'm glad that I'm not alone in having some problems managing my storage space. I spent a lot of time offloading a bunch of heavy programs, purging hidden caches, and cleaning up unwanted photos and videos last week only to see my free storage space actually decrease after I freed up at least 50GB.

I know something's amiss and I'm not too freaked out, but it's a drag that I don't have the dumbest idea how much free space I truly have.

Also, is there a way to get rid of those dynamic wallpapers properly? I just want a few of them. I don't want 30GB of them. I've already disabled Apple Intelligence once only for it to get turned back on after the last update.
 
Attention all mac user wirth endless system data calculating
Attention all mac user wirth endless system data calculating
Attention all mac user wirth endless system data calculating

 has assumed control
 has assumed control
 has assumed control……
 
was back up to correct or so 103gb....now all of a sudden back to 60gb. Didn't do a thing.
 
I enabled Apple Intelligence and thought to let it be on for longer time as storage calculation is able to work correctly if it is on. After about 2 days all started to lag and System Settings window appeared as completely empty. Only way out was to reboot and I disabled Apple Intelligence after that. It tool about 30 minutes for storage amounts to go back being weird as they were before but at least machine behaves normally now.

Beta feature seems to make all system to misbehave no matter if it is enabled or disabled. Looks like a mess...
 
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Well maybe it would really be worth it... I sent the report as this thing is bugging me more than most other Apple bugs of last 15 years...

I tried to use "logical reasoning" and Disk Space Analyzer" (GrandPerspective would do a same thing) - and found that there's nothing in storage that could account for 60+ gigabytes of change in purgeable storage between Apple Intelligence enabled and disabled. /opt has under 2 GB of data in total snd ~/Library is only 51 GB in total. Only folder of comparable size is ~/Downloads at about 62 GB.

As real used amount of storage does not vary noticeably between enabling and disabling Apple Intelligence (only by few GB), it looks like some sort of a bug - especially considering that illogically big amount of purgeable data and inability to calculate "System Data" do go hand in hand.
 
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nmt1900 said:
Well maybe it would really be worth it... I sent the report as this thing is bugging me more than most other Apple bugs of last 15 years...

I tried to use "logical reasoning" and Disk Space Analyzer" (GrandPerspective would do a same thing) - and found that there's nothing in storage that could account for 60+ gigabytes of change in purgeable storage between Apple Intelligence enabled and disabled. /opt has under 2 GB of data in total snd ~/Library is only 51 GB in total. Only folder of comparable size is ~/Downloads at about 62 GB.

As real used amount of storage does not vary noticeably between enabling and disabling Apple Intelligence (only by few GB), it looks like some sort of a bug - especially considering that illogically big amount of purgeable data and inability to calculate "System Data" do go hand in hand.
Click to expand...
maybe this is a bug with 15.3. I used 15.2 before but it did not appear this bug. After i update to 15.3.2 (I dont know why 15.3.2 update is already downloaded in my mac while i turned auto update off, so i have to install it to free up the space of update files) and turn off Apple Intelligent then this problem appears. I got some help with Apple Support and i had a call with their Senior, they told me that they will send this problem to Apple to fix it and i will have a response within a week. Hope this will fix the bug
 
I jumped on Sequoia bandwagon with 15.1.1 and i think that this has been going on even before 15.3 ...
 
nmt1900 said:
I jumped on Sequoia bandwagon with 15.1.1 and i think that this has been going on even before 15.3 ...
Click to expand...
does this bug affect to your macbook's perfomance? I have met this bug today so i dont know does it affect to my macbook's perfomance or not.
 
Not directly - only once when I left Apple Intelligence enabled for longer time (more than 24 hours) I started to see some lagging in UI and System Settings panes did not open any more. I rebooted and turned Apple Intelligence off. Since then there have been no performance issues.
My main concern however is with this purgeable data - when unexpectedly big amount gets marked as purgeable and there's no obvious way to see what is marked as such there's no way to be sure that some actual user data gets marked as purgeable and that might lead to eventual data loss. As there's no way to understand the cause behind this behaviour one ends up making first bug report in many years...
 
nmt1900 said:
Not directly - only once when I left Apple Intelligence enabled for longer time (more than 24 hours) I started to see some lagging in UI and System Settings panes did not open any more. I rebooted and turned Apple Intelligence off. Since then there have been no performance issues.
My main concern however is with this purgeable data - when unexpectedly big amount gets marked as purgeable and there's no obvious way to see what is marked as such there's no way to be sure that some actual user data gets marked as purgeable and that might lead to eventual data loss. As there's no way to understand the cause behind this behaviour one ends up making first bug report in many years...
Click to expand...
what is your macos version?
 
nmt1900 said:
Not directly - only once when I left Apple Intelligence enabled for longer time (more than 24 hours) I started to see some lagging in UI and System Settings panes did not open any more. I rebooted and turned Apple Intelligence off. Since then there have been no performance issues.
My main concern however is with this purgeable data - when unexpectedly big amount gets marked as purgeable and there's no obvious way to see what is marked as such there's no way to be sure that some actual user data gets marked as purgeable and that might lead to eventual data loss. As there's no way to understand the cause behind this behaviour one ends up making first bug report in many years...
Click to expand...

Where do you see this purgeable data?

I used a tool that showed me purgeable data and after I purged it, everything in my ProtonDrive folder was only online available and I had to download over 400GB again. That was very annoying. But my own fault because I trusted that app, that did not specify what it means with purgeable data and where it is located.
 
Adora said:
Where do you see this purgeable data?

I used a tool that showed me purgeable data and after I purged it, everything in my ProtonDrive folder was only online available and I had to download over 400GB again. That was very annoying. But my own fault because I trusted that app, that did not specify what it means with purgeable data and where it is located.
Click to expand...
Amount of purgeable data is visible in Disk Utility and Finder (using Get info). Having about 70 GB marked purgeable when Apple Intelligence is off and less than 10 GB when Apple Intelligence is on cannot be considered as normal as actual amount of storage use changes only by few gigabytes (which include Apple Intelligence itself). Let's see what Apple can say in answer to bugreport...
 

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nmt1900 said:
Amount of purgeable data is visible in Disk Utility and Finder (using Get info). Having about 70 GB marked purgeable when Apple Intelligence is off and less than 10 GB when Apple Intelligence is on cannot be considered as normal as actual amount of storage use changes only by few gigabytes (which include Apple Intelligence itself). Let's see what Apple can say in answer to bugreport...
Click to expand...


Thanks I found it and have 625,8 GB purgeable data in DiskUtility. And my ProtonDrive folder is 619,54 GB.

It's located in /Users/username/Library/CloudStorage

There is also a 12GB folder in it called "iCloudDrive-iCloudDrive (16.03.25 13/35)" , but that is 15,3MB and seems not to count.

But the offline data of my ProtonDrive seems to be always marked as purgeable because it's also stored online. I am not sure if this is a bug or intended.

Do you have something in that CloudStorage folder?

My iCloud drive has over 100GB offline data, it should be almost 150 but I logged out a few days ago and what might explain this strange folder mentioned above. It's really hard to get all folders offline again from iCloud drive. It always interrupts. Before logging out everything was stored offline too. Now I permanently have to click on download for every folder on it.

I'll try what happens to my storage and the purgeable when I activate Apple Intelligence and deactivate it again. But I need to wait for the finished downloads on iCloud drive because the total available space changes every second now. Could take a while. I don't know why this is so slow.


Screenshot 2025-03-21 at 04.30.19.png


I found it in Finder too and it's the same:

Screenshot 2025-03-21 at 04.32.34.png



On the other Mac there is no Proton drive anymore. I even deleted that whole CloudStorage folder. iCloud Drive is downloaded completely there with about 150GB and it shows me 596,47 GB (221,11 GB purgeable). I already wondered why my drive is so full. I'll activate Apple Intelligence now there and make screenshots of Disk Utility and Finder before.
 
I just activated Apple Intelligence on my iMac and it immediately showed 100% and a spinning wheel for a few seconds, then it was on.

Nothing really changed for used data and purgeable data. It seems everything already had been downloaded before and wasn't deleted with disabling.

I wonder if this 221 GB purgeable data is from Apple Intelligence. Where would that be stored? I don't find anything that big that might be purgeable. There is only the users library with 240GB where the downloaded iCloud drive is included.
 
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Adora said:
Thanks I found it and have 625,8 GB purgeable data in DiskUtility. And my ProtonDrive folder is 619,54 GB.

It's located in /Users/username/Library/CloudStorage

There is also a 12GB folder in it called "iCloudDrive-iCloudDrive (16.03.25 13/35)" , but that is 15,3MB and seems not to count.

But the offline data of my ProtonDrive seems to be always marked as purgeable because it's also stored online. I am not sure if this is a bug or intended.

Do you have something in that CloudStorage folder?

My iCloud drive has over 100GB offline data, it should be almost 150 but I logged out a few days ago and what might explain this strange folder mentioned above. It's really hard to get all folders offline again from iCloud drive. It always interrupts. Before logging out everything was stored offline too. Now I permanently have to click on download for every folder on it.

I'll try what happens to my storage and the purgeable when I activate Apple Intelligence and deactivate it again. But I need to wait for the finished downloads on iCloud drive because the total available space changes every second now. Could take a while. I don't know why this is so slow.


On the other Mac there is no Proton drive anymore. I even deleted that whole CloudStorage folder. iCloud Drive is downloaded completely there with about 150GB and it shows me 596,47 GB (221,11 GB purgeable). I already wondered why my drive is so full. I'll activate Apple Intelligence now there and make screenshots of Disk Utility and Finder before.
Click to expand...
CloudStorage folder marked as purgeable does make sense. My CloudStorage is only about 15 GB total/less than 2 GB on disk. It does not make any sense if enabling and disabling Apple Intelligence changes amount marked as purgeable by amount exceeding size of ~/Library folder. Failure in calculating System Data makes it more and more to appear like a bug.
 
nmt1900 said:
CloudStorage folder marked as purgeable does make sense. My CloudStorage is only about 15 GB total/less than 2 GB on disk. It does not make any sense if enabling and disabling Apple Intelligence changes amount marked as purgeable by amount exceeding size of ~/Library folder. Failure in calculating System Data makes it more and more to appear like a bug.
Click to expand...

Is purgeable data included in system data? Then there must be really a problem because the iMac has 219 GB purgeable now and System Data is 206 GB. Also there is no Cloud Storage. The folder has 10 KB now with an empty ProtonDrive, because everything is online.

On the other Mac purgeable is 631 GB and System Data 289 GB and 619 GB is coming from ProtonDrive's offline data.

Shouldn't Apple offer an option to purge purgeable data and show at the same time what it is? Instead they offer me on one Mac to optimize the storage of the TV App that I never used in my whole life. Why don't they show purgeable storage here? An where is the data of my proton drive? In Finder 1.49 TB is used here it's only 870 GB.


Screenshot 2025-03-21 at 21.29.38.png


Here on the iMac Music is missing in the list:

Screen Shot 2025-03-21 at 21.29.58.png


This app has an option to delete purgeable data, but also does not give more information about it. But it's exactly the amount of 219 GB, that I see in Finder or Disk Utility. But it tells me, it's space of already removed data.

Screen Shot 2025-03-21 at 21.05.28.png


Everything doesn't make any sense to me. I always hated APFS.
 
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It does not make sense because many things point to high possibility of a bug in this behaviour - especially considering the role Apple Intelligence has in this.We are forced to have stuff openly labeled as BETA in stable releases and it might cause problems even if it is disabled.

Apps that can purge purgeable data without the way to see what would be purged do not feel safe to be used in this situation - except when possible data loss is not a problem.
 
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Which files are purgeable? Look with new versions of Sparsity and Precize

Where are all those purgeable files? Two updated utilities to help you find them: Precize and Sparsity, which will crawl folders checking which files are purgeable, sparse or clones.
eclecticlight.co

Where does macOS get its volume free space figures from?

After studying thousand of log entries in less than 2 seconds, this is how macOS updates its values for purgeable and available space. But who uses them?
eclecticlight.co

TLDR: Just let the OS handle its own resources.

My M1 mini was going strong with less ~5% free space, typically ~150 GB purgeable (on a 512 GB SSD). And no drive problems — I’m able to monitor via DriveDX.
 
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