User level: Level 1 (54 points)Filled up my Mac storage. Trashed 45GB. Storage shows 40GB now available. No, wait, only 25MB available. What happened? Repeated more trashing, similar result. Now Mail says not enough storage to function. And Chrome now says it is full.
Full disclosure: I recently updated my OS from Yosemite directly to Monterey (as far as this Mac will go). There was not much storage left before I updated, now there is, and continues to be, none at all.
Posted on Nov 4, 2026 4:52 AM
User level: Level 9 (62,211 points)Nov 4, 2026 10:13 AM in response to John Howarth
Deleting files in the Finder does not immediately delete the file and free up space.
Think of the trash as more like a quarantine area, so you can recover files if you deleted them by mistake.
It's usually tied into Time Machine, where the OS keeps a local snapshot of files on the local disk before offloading them to external storage. While you might 'delete' the master/current copy of a file, it still exists in the snapshots, and will do until the snapshot is cycled to external storage or it ages out.
If I remember rightly, local snapshots exist for 24 hours before aging out, which means that the 'deleted' files are still on your drive for that long.
If you're absolutely sure you don't want to recover any of this data you can turn off Time Machine and (potentially dangerously) delete the snapshot data via Disk Utility (open Disk Utility.app, select your drive and check the APFS Snapshots list - the 'size' column indicates how much actual size/changed data exists in each snapshot):
User level: Level 9 (78,350 points)Nov 5, 2026 8:42 AM in response to John Howarth
John Howarth wrote:
Thanks Camelot for your reply. I understand about emptying the trash to complete a deletion. Now, in the image you attached, I see everything that you have greyed out, but I see none of what is below. How do I get to that?
Here is an Apple article regarding viewing & deleting APFS snapshots:
https://support.apple.com/guide/disk-utility/view-apfs-snapshots-dskuf82354dc/mac
User level: Level 9 (62,211 points)Nov 4, 2026 1:32 PM in response to John Howarth
> Now, in the image you attached, I see everything that you have greyed out, but I see none of what is below. How do I get to that?
Check what you have selected in the sidebar. Modern OS drives get partitioned into multiple parts for the OS, user data, etc. so you might be looking at the wrong part.
It's also possible that Time Machine is turned off and it's not saving snapshots, but I'll go with my first thought as the culprit.
User level: Level 1 (54 points)Nov 4, 2026 10:49 AM in response to Camelot
Thanks Camelot for your reply. I understand about emptying the trash to complete a deletion. Now, in the image you attached, I see everything that you have greyed out, but I see none of what is below. How do I get to that?
User level: Level 1 (54 points)Nov 4, 2026 1:50 PM in response to Camelot
Unfortunately no. I have six choices in the sidebar when everything is opened. None of them produce the snapshot list.
A storage space of 50+GB has reduced to 1.4GBsince your last message, without me doing very much. The laptop fans have been very active as well.
Also, my laptop is rejecting my long held Apple ID password. The same password on my phone lets me in, but on the problematic Mac, I am locked out.
User level: Level 1 (54 points)Nov 6, 2026 4:07 AM in response to HWTech
Thank you HWTech. That article explained a lot. I have been a Mac user for 30+ years, professionally as a film editor and music producer, but have never noticed the menu items in Disc Utility. Once the snapshot was deleted, it was interesting to see the slow gradual return of 5GB+ of space. This slow return mirrored the slow loss of space when I previously deleted items from the drive. I have not regained all the space I lost, but I now have a slight insight as to why I should never allow my drive to fill up. All that stuff going on in the background....
Originally posted at discussions.apple.com/thread/256388671