What's Secretly Taking Up my Storage on MBP M1?

[Clausewitz]

I started my day with 201GB available. Then came a small update for WhatsApp, which I decided to install. The whole app is around 147MB yet, somehow, around 3GB of my storage space has been used up. Something seems to be eating into my storage space & I don't know what.

 

[ArPe]

Your username /Library/Caches

That’s where temp data is stored. You can empty that folder once or twice a month.

 

[Clausewitz]

Your username /Library/Caches

That’s where temp data is stored. You can empty that folder once or twice a month.

Its not occupying much of space. I suspect its spotlight. But thanks for the advice. I'll keep an eye on Caches as well.

 

[HDFan]

This is a common topic. A lot of things can take up space - caches, mobile synch, IOS backups, etc.

There are a number of utilities, such as DaisyDisk, which can give you an idea about where your space is going. Run as administrator.

 

[aid]

It could well be local Time Machine snapshots. Try the command "sudo tmutil listlocalsnapshots /" in the Terminal to see if you have any present on your computer. Here's an Apple link about these: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204015