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Home Mac OS X iPhone iPad Tips & Tricks Jailbreak News iOS What the “Other” Storage Space is in Mac OS X & How to Clear It Up Jan 15, 2015 - 15 Comments Many Mac users check the About This Mac Storage tab to get a quick overview of their disk space usage, and many will see a rather large “Other” storage space taking up disk capacity on their drives. If this sounds familiar, it’s probably because iOS often has a rather large Other storage space, but that’s largely where the similarities end, and in OS X it’s much easier to track down exactly what “Other” is. This is basically because the Mac has a user accessible file system and system directories, where as those corresponding elements in iOS are largely hidden from the user. Let’s take a moment to check the Storage space on any Mac, and then learn a bit more about the Other space in OS X, what it is, and how you could reduce the size of “Other” storage on a Mac if the computer is running low on available disk space. Checking “Other” Storage in Mac OS X If you’re curious to see how many files and items on a Mac drive are classified by OS X as “Other” storage consumed, you can check through the About This Mac window panel: Click the Apple menu and choose “About This Mac” Look under “Storage” tab to find the Other data on the Mac drive The Other storage is the blue item in new versions of OS X, and the yellow item in the graph on prior versions of Mac OS X, regardless, Other is visible in any modern version of Mac OS X. In versions prior to OS X 10.10 you will need to click on “More Info” in the About This Mac screen to see the Storage tab, otherwise everything else is the same. The size of Other is often quite large in OS X and it varies considerably as you can see in the various screen shots here, but again, this is not something to overly concern yourself with as it could be in the iOS world. Nonetheless, it can be valuable to know what that other stuff is, particularly in the event you are running low on disk space. What Exactly is “Other” Storage in OS X? Perhaps Other is taking up a ton of space, so what exactly is that “Other” storage on a Mac? Essentially it’s anything that OS X does not allocate to the listed specified storage types of applications, backups, audio, movies, backups, and photos. That means a very broad list of items will be considered as Other, including things like the following: Documents and file types, including PDF, doc, PSD, etc Archives and disk images, including zips, dmg, iso, etc Various types of personal and user data Anything in the system folders of OS X, ranging from temporary files, swap, voices, etc User library items like Application Support, iCloud files, screen savers, etc User caches and system caches, including things like browser caches and locally stored message media files Fonts, app accessories, application plugins, and app extensions Various file and file types not recognized by Spotlight, for example a virtual machine hard drive, Windows Boot Camp partitions, etc As you can see, this is not unnecessary junk or clutter. Basically, anything that is not one of the media types that the Storage tab specifies will be shown as “Other”. This makes the OS X “Other” storage quite a bit different from the same label applied to iOS storage, and while there can be some bloated caches and other junk, the Other storage on a Mac is more likely to make sense. This is often in contrast to the sometimes opaque and peculiar Other storage capacity in iOS, which can be anything from mishandled caches to data that is not being properly removed when apps or media is deleted, or even misallocated labels, if you happen to run into a bloated Other space on your mobile devices, you can typically reclaim and remove the Other iOS storage by deleting bloated apps, their data, and then restoring an iPhone or iPad from a backup as described here. Cleaning Up “Other” Storage on a Mac Generally speaking, the Other storage on a Mac is not something to overly concern yourself with unless you’re running low on disk space. If you do want to try and clean up the Other storage capacity in OS X, you’ll want to look in the following locations for data and files you no longer need. User(s) Downloads folders at ~/Downloads User Library caches ~/Library/Caches/ User Documents folders ~/Documents/ User Messages app attachments and media files Going further, you can apply some broader techniques to free up disk storage and the Other space. These articles will undoubtedly prove invaluable if you’re attempting to locate large files on a Mac and recover disk capacity on any OS X machine: How to free up disk space on any Mac with OS X Locating other large files by advanced file search in OS X Uninstalling unused applications in Mac OS X As usual with deleting things in OS X, always back up your Mac with Time Machine before getting started, and do not remove items you are not uncertain of. While system files and caches are included in “Other”, you almost certainly do not want to modify the /System directory or any other root directory or system folder. What About “Other” Bloated System Caches, Temp, and System Files? To clear out OS X system level caches, temp files, virtual memory files, sleep images, and other things that could potentially count against Other storage, rebooting the Mac is often sufficient. Do not attempt to modify anything in the system folder unless you’re an expert user who knows exactly what they’re doing and why, you will otherwise almost certainly break something. If you want to, you can also use third party tools like Onyx to clear out caches safely, though it’s rarely necessary. Finally, do note that Boot Camp partitions of Windows and Linux will also show as Other, and they are not reducible without removing those drives. This is demonstrated with Windows 10 and OS X 10.11 on the same drive with dual booting partitions: Have any tricks of your own to free up the Other storage on the Mac or recover disk capacity in OS X? Let us know in the comments. Enjoy this tip? Subscribe to the OSXDaily newsletter to get more of our great Apple tips, tricks, and important news delivered to your inbox! Enter your email address below: 914 564 Related articles: Check Available Storage Space and How Much Space an App Uses in iOS Check How Much Storage Space is Used & Available on an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch Find Out How Much Storage Space Photos Take Up on iPhone iPhone or iPad Ran Out of Storage Space? Here’s How to Make Space Available Quickly Posted by: Paul Horowitz in Mac OS X, Tips & Tricks 15 Comments » Comments RSS Feed David says: January 15, 2015 at 12:57 pm This is fantastic. “Other” in OS X is almost always YOUR FILES! Your personal data, your personal stuff! Everything that is yours and makes your computer yours, and most of us have lots of stuff on our Macs. I think Apple should maybe relabel it, because there are many hangups from iPhone users who are used to “Other” growing to be gigantic because of some poor garbage collection in iOS. This is so hugely important to understand especially if you come from iOS where Other is always crud that hasn’t been properly cleaned up. On the Mac, Other is basically “your data”. Reply Cam says: January 15, 2015 at 1:26 pm Windows 10 and OS X 10.11… I saw this at the end of the article, first, isn’t Yosemite 10.10? Also, the X stands for 10, so OS X 10.x.x is redundant. Reply auntchilada says: January 15, 2015 at 3:10 pm i’ll point out that the info in the storage pane is created, at least partly, by spotlight indexing. here, an external drive is shared with large movie images, archives and a time machine backup. i have removed the disk from spotlight indexing. TM can’t be removed from spotlight indexing. the storage pane only reports the TM backup in the graph. if you disable some elements from spotlight search results, it looks like they become “other.” Reply DCJ001 says: January 15, 2015 at 3:54 pm “Option click the Apple menu and choose “About This Mac”” Paul. Please remove the word “Option” from your directions, and begin with the word “Click.” Reply Paul says: January 15, 2015 at 3:58 pm Whoops you’re right, typo left over from initially separating Yosemite and Mavericks. Fixed, thanks for pointing that out. Reply yyzguy says: January 15, 2015 at 5:03 pm Not sure, but I think Trash is also included. Disk Inventory X can help. When I first became a mac user, I didn’t realize that Trash never gets automatically cleaned out like it does on Windows. Disk Inventory X made that very clear. http://www.derlien.com/ Reply Ted says: January 15, 2015 at 7:26 pm I guess I’m doing well. My 10 month old MBP retina that came preinstalled with Mavericks (and still using 10.9.5) says “Other: Zero KB”. Woo-Hoo! Reply Ted says: January 15, 2015 at 7:27 pm Good article BTW in case I ever needed. Saved it to my Readability account…. Reply bizmo says: January 17, 2015 at 6:22 pm how?????!! Reply Stewart says: January 16, 2015 at 1:46 am If you are using a Macbook normally use Time Machine for backups to an external drive and have Time Machine turned on but no external drive connected then Time Machine will save backups to the local hard drive until you connect your external drive. These used to be included in Other but I think they are marked as Backups in Yosemite. The backups can fill a 128gb SSD fairly quickly. Connecting the external drive will allow Time Machine to move the backups from the local drive freeing up space. Reply John says: January 16, 2015 at 8:06 am Backups is listed twice In the section What Exactly is “Other” Storage in OS X? Reply James Ludtke says: January 16, 2015 at 9:08 am On my Mac mini, I have an SSD as my main drive, and a partitioned 1Tb HD, One of the partitions holds my bootable backup. The SSD used memory is 100% blue. My main SSD drive has no blue storage at all. The largest bar, about 80% of the total used, is coded green. Is this because the system thinks I have a fusion drive, which I do not have? Reply James Ludtke says: January 16, 2015 at 9:15 am Sorry, editing problem. The previous post should have read: On my Mac mini, I have an SSD as my main drive, and a partitioned 1Tb HD, One of the partitions holds my bootable backup. The SSD used memory has no blue at all.The largest bar, about 80% of the total used, is coded green. TH HD partition with the bootable backup is all blue. Is this because the system thinks I have a fusion drive, which I do not have? Reply jose says: January 16, 2015 at 12:12 pm very helpful Reply Abdulaziz says: January 19, 2015 at 4:56 pm I work at an Apple Premium Reseller and I saw a lot of this. We recieve lots of macbook airs with a huge cap. under “Other”. A co-worker pointed to us that if you delete your old user account and create a new one it will surprisingly be gone. of course you have to back up and move your data before that. Reply Leave a Reply Name (required) Mail (will not be published) (required) Website « OS X 10.10.2 Beta 5 Released for Developer Testing Get Exchange Rates & Convert Currency with Spotlight in OS X » Shop for Apple & Mac Deals on Amazon.com Subscribe to OSXDaily OS X Daily Email us: osxdaily...@gmail.com About OSXDaily | Contact Us | Privacy Policy | Sitemap This website is unrelated to Apple Inc All trademarks and copyrights on this website are property of their respective owners. © 2015 OS X Daily. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction without explicit permission is prohibited. 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