what is "other" on macbook?

[AFR25]

i really annoying what is "other" on macbook's storage? it takes many gbs on my storage. anyone know what "other" is and could you give me some advice to manage "other" so this "other" doesnt take my storage.

thanks so much

 

[mildocjr]

Everything other than Apps, Music, Books, Photos, Documents, and Videos.

Things you might see in this would be:
Internet Cache
Program Logs
Crash Logs
App settings (such as that checkbox that you clicked which is saved in a property list file)

It's literally other things that do not fit into one of the listed categories.

 

[Samuelsan2001]

Quite often it's local time machine back ups, turn off time machine see if it disappears.

 

[Weaselboy]

i really annoying what is "other" on macbook's storage? it takes many gbs on my storage. anyone know what "other" is and could you give me some advice to manage "other" so this "other" doesnt take my storage.

thanks so much

Other is everything that does not fall into one of the remaining listed categories, including the OS itself. 20GB is quite normal.

 

[mildocjr]

Quite often it's local time machine back ups, turn off time machine see if it disappears.

Once you back up to Time Machine, most of this is removed, it will only contain data that has been added since the backup started, typically this falls under the backups category.
[doublepost=1468346835][/doublepost]To add to my original post, the OS system files are included, so removing all of the "Other" category is a bad idea. The graph is only useful for determining what you are comfortable with. If you see you have 15 GB of Document storage on your disk, it might make you consider offloading some of those files to external media. (CD, DVD, USB Stick, External Drive, etc...)

 

[Weaselboy]

Once you back up to Time Machine, most of this is removed, it will only contain data that has been added since the backup started, typically this falls under the backups category.

That is not how it works. Even after you complete a TM backup, it will still stay in the hidden /.MobileBackups folder and just accumulate until the disk starts to reach 80% full, then the OS will start to purge off the oldest data.

You are correct though, that this is not part of Other.

 

[mildocjr]

That is not how it works. Even after you complete a TM backup, it will still stay in the hidden /.MobileBackups folder and just accumulate until the disk starts to reach 80% full, then the OS will start to purge off the oldest data.

You are correct though, that this is not part of Other.

Interesting as a I notice a drop in used space when the time machine backup finishes.

 

[Weaselboy]

Interesting as a I notice a drop in used space when the time machine backup finishes.

You can test it by downloading a large video or something then deleting it, then emptying the trash. That moves the file to /.MobileBackups.

Then run this command in Terminal to see this size of the folder.

sudo du -hs /.MobileBackups

Then do a TM backup and check again and you should see the size is unchanged. As long as there is plenty of drive space, it just keeps on saving things to that folder.

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

More info on how it works at this link.

 

[mildocjr]

You can test it by downloading a large video or something then deleting it, then emptying the trash. That moves the file to /.MobileBackups.

Then run this command in Terminal to see this size of the folder.

sudo du -hs /.MobileBackups

Then do a TM backup and check again and you should see the size is unchanged. As long as there is plenty of drive space, it just keeps on saving things to that folder.

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

More info on how it works at this link.

Thanks for the link and the command.