# Can't clear memory space on my MacBook Air--bigger problem? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 26, 2018, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-clear-memory-space-on-my-macbook-air-bigger-problem/814869 "2018-05-26T21:45:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![TSBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@TSBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TSBG)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2018, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-clear-memory-space-on-my-macbook-air-bigger-problem/814869/1 "2018-05-26T21:45:13Z")
I have a 2010 MacBook Air–ancient, and I need a new one, but it gets the job done. Until recently. It’s running very slowly, I get the spinning beach ball a lot, and the finder now crashes sometimes, which it never has before. The drive was (is?) pretty full, at about 180 of 250 GB. So I moved some files off the computer and deleted them on the MacBook, about 13 GB in all, but the available/used numbers didn’t change. Restarted–no change. After some research into the problem, I reset Spotlight. No change. Dowloaded OmniDiskSweeper and trashed at least another 20 GB of files–no change. Ran MalwareBytes–nothing found. What is going on here? Is my computer about to die? PS, I’m running High Sierra because I got tired of being nagged about updates. Is this one of those things where Apple is deliberately strangling performance for older devices with a new OS? ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2018, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-clear-memory-space-on-my-macbook-air-bigger-problem/814869/2 "2018-05-26T21:50:36Z")
Do you use Time Machine? ---
**Author:** ![TSBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@TSBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TSBG)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2018, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-clear-memory-space-on-my-macbook-air-bigger-problem/814869/3 "2018-05-26T21:56:11Z")
No, Carbonite. Why? ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2018, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-clear-memory-space-on-my-macbook-air-bigger-problem/814869/4 "2018-05-26T21:59:22Z")
Because, Time Machine makes local snapshots that are invisible, and consume disc space. I just went through this with my wife’s MacBook Air last week. You did remember to empty the Trash, right? ---
**Author:** ![TSBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@TSBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TSBG)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2018, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-clear-memory-space-on-my-macbook-air-bigger-problem/814869/5 "2018-05-26T22:02:51Z")
Yes, the trash is empty. I emptied it and restarted after each round of deletions. I suppose it’s possible that Time Machine was used by the prior owner and there are some snapshots hiding on the computer. But I don’t think that’s the (whole) problem–I should be seeing the available memory increase, but it doesn’t change. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2018, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-clear-memory-space-on-my-macbook-air-bigger-problem/814869/6 "2018-05-26T22:19:07Z")
There were a bunch of disc-space related issues to the APFS conversion of SSDs in High Sierra beta releases, but I’m not aware of any in the current release. It’s possible that your disc is subtly corrupted. A restart into single-user mode, and forcing an fsck\_apfs might help. If you go to About this Mac-\>Storage, what do you see? ---
**Author:** ![CharmaChameleon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9d8465/32.png) [@CharmaChameleon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CharmaChameleon)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2018, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-clear-memory-space-on-my-macbook-air-bigger-problem/814869/7 "2018-05-26T22:40:14Z")
I’ve been using Memory Clean 2, then 3 (see the App Store) for several years, and have found it does a good job of compacting and freeing memory. The paid version, which does a better job than the “free” version, costs $9.99. My experience is Safari and Apple Mail are ridiculous memory hogs, by the way; Firefox 60.0.1 seems to control memory more robustly, and also responds to Memory Clean better than does Safari, in my opinion. The Memory Clean product might be worth your while. All the best! ---
**Author:** ![TSBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@TSBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TSBG)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2018, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-clear-memory-space-on-my-macbook-air-bigger-problem/814869/8 "2018-05-26T22:44:31Z")
Hmmm. In About This Mac it says 130 of 250 GB available. If I do Apple-I on the hard drive icon (which is how I had been checking the memory), it now says 130 GB available (up from 68 in all prior checks), but it still says 181 GB are being used, which is obviously impossible. I’m going to try your suggestion now. ETA: Beowulff’s suggestion that is. Regarding Memory Clean, I was under the impression that Mac OS was supposed to optimize storage on its own, but maybe that’s not happening, or Memory Clean can do it better. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2018, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-clear-memory-space-on-my-macbook-air-bigger-problem/814869/9 "2018-05-26T22:54:23Z")
Memory Clean is totally irrelevant to your problem. That app manages _memory_, that is RAM. Your problem is with the _disk_, which is completely different than memory. Your thread title unfortunately muddies things, but it’s clear from your description that disk space is the issue, nothing to do with memory. ---
**Author:** ![TSBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@TSBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TSBG)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2018, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-clear-memory-space-on-my-macbook-air-bigger-problem/814869/10 "2018-05-26T23:07:26Z")
Okay, I tried the single-user process suggested by beowulff, and it says the disk is fine and no repairs were made. “About this Mac” now says only 67 GB available. Before the largest single chunk of space used was 84 GB for “documents”, now it says the biggest chunk is 166 GB for “system.” And as I was typing, the numbers changed–now it says 130 GB available, and 102 GB are taken up by “system.” Something’s weird here. Do I need the pros? PS, Apple-I on the hard drive still says 130 available, 181 used. ---
**Author:** ![TSBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@TSBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TSBG)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2018, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-clear-memory-space-on-my-macbook-air-bigger-problem/814869/11 "2018-05-26T23:08:28Z")
> [@markn\_1](#): > > Memory Clean is totally irrelevant to your problem. That app manages _memory_, that is RAM. Your problem is with the _disk_, which is completely different than memory. Your thread title unfortunately muddies things, but it’s clear from your description that disk space is the issue, nothing to do with memory. Yes, that’s right. Thanks for making the distinction clear. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2018, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-clear-memory-space-on-my-macbook-air-bigger-problem/814869/12 "2018-05-26T23:17:33Z")
> [@TSBG](#): > > Okay, I tried the single-user process suggested by beowulff, and it says the disk is fine and no repairs were made. > > “About this Mac” now says only 67 GB available. Before the largest single chunk of space used was 84 GB for “documents”, now it says the biggest chunk is 166 GB for “system.” > > And as I was typing, the numbers changed–now it says 130 GB available, and 102 GB are taken up by “system.” > > Something’s weird here. Do I need the pros? > > PS, Apple-I on the hard drive still says 130 available, 181 used. I think you are OK. There are lots of caches and temporary files that come and go. Also, what the Finder thinks of “in use” may not jive with what the System profiler does. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2018, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-clear-memory-space-on-my-macbook-air-bigger-problem/814869/13 "2018-05-26T23:34:30Z")
I always use the command line for system level stuff like this. You might try opening a Terminal and type “df -h” and see what it says. ---
**Author:** ![TSBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@TSBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TSBG)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2018, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-clear-memory-space-on-my-macbook-air-bigger-problem/814869/14 "2018-05-27T00:14:02Z")
Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity iused ifree %iused Mounted on /dev/disk1s1 234Gi 169Gi 61Gi 74% 625077 9223372036854150730 0% / devfs 183Ki 183Ki 0Bi 100% 634 0 100% /dev /dev/disk1s4 234Gi 3.0Gi 61Gi 5% 2 9223372036854775805 0% /private/var/vm map -hosts 0Bi 0Bi 0Bi 100% 0 0 100% /net map auto\_home 0Bi 0Bi 0Bi 100% 0 0 100% /home The spacing is messed up but I believe this shows about 80% of the HD space is being used…what did I learn? ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2018, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-clear-memory-space-on-my-macbook-air-bigger-problem/814869/15 "2018-05-27T00:23:48Z")
61G free of 234G total, or 74% used. Ignore the disk1s4 report - that’s your recovery partition, and its usage is included in disk1s1’s. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2018, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-clear-memory-space-on-my-macbook-air-bigger-problem/814869/16 "2018-05-27T00:25:18Z")
You only care about the first line (/dev/disk1s1). It says you have 61 GiB available (169 GiB used) in a 234 GiB partition. (These are gibibytes; multiply by 1.074 to get (decimal) gigabytes.) This is the actual amount of free space on the disk, regardless of caching or whatever About this Mac or other high level tools are doing to try to classify the space as Documents, System, etc. If you delete files, you should see this number change appropriately the next time you run df. ---
**Author:** ![TSBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@TSBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TSBG)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2018, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-clear-memory-space-on-my-macbook-air-bigger-problem/814869/17 "2018-05-27T00:42:28Z")
Okay, I deleted a little more than 2 GB of files and now I have 62 GB available…what with conversions from binary to decimal and rounding, I can buy that. I guess it’s impossible to know since I didn’t do this check before I started chopping back the weeds, but given the amount I already deleted, I’m guessing I was close to capacity on the HD, which was probably slowing everything. Does that seem right? ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2018, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-clear-memory-space-on-my-macbook-air-bigger-problem/814869/18 "2018-05-27T02:03:19Z")
Yes. ---
**Author:** ![TSBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@TSBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TSBG)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2018, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-clear-memory-space-on-my-macbook-air-bigger-problem/814869/19 "2018-05-27T02:30:57Z")
Thank you **beowulff** and **markn+**. Much appreciated.