How to check storage on your Mac

Check storage in System Settings

The main storage view is in System Settings. In macOS 13 Ventura and later, including macOS 15 Sequoia, macOS 26 Tahoe and macOS 27 Golden Gate, it's here:

Apple menu, then System Settings, then General, then Storage

1. 1

   Open System Settings

   Choose Apple menu > System Settings.

2. 2

   Open Storage

   Click General in the sidebar (you may need to scroll), then click Storage.

3. 3

   Read the storage bar

   Move the pointer over each color to see how much space that category uses. Light gray is free space.

4. 4

   See every volume

   Click All Volumes to see the space used and available on each volume and container of the internal disk.

5. 5

   Look inside a category

   Click the Info button next to a category, such as Documents or Applications, to see what's in it.

The headline number tells you how much is used and how much is available. Available includes purgeable space: space macOS is holding for things like caches and can free when an app needs it (purgeable space explained).

If you see more than one disk in the Storage area, your internal disk has several volumes or containers. Volumes in the same APFS container share their free space (Apple).

On macOS 12 Monterey and earlier, the same view is in Apple menu > About This Mac > Storage.

From About This Mac

About This Mac still gets you there in two clicks. Choose Apple menu > About This Mac, then click More Info. The About settings that open show your startup disk with its available space and a Storage Settings button that opens the full view.

Check storage in Finder

For a quick number without waiting for categories, Finder is faster.

• Get Info on the disk. Choose Go > Computer, select Macintosh HD, and press ⌘I (File > Get Info). The window shows the disk's capacity, available space and used space.
• The status bar. Choose View > Show Status Bar in any Finder window. The bar at the bottom shows how much space is available on that disk (Apple).
• A folder's size. Select the folder and press ⌘I. To compare folders, turn on folder sizes in list view, as described in what's taking up space on your Mac.

Check storage in Disk Utility

Disk Utility shows the disk the way APFS sees it. Open it from Applications > Utilities, or press ⌘Space and type Disk Utility.

1. Select Macintosh HD in the sidebar. The window shows its capacity, how much is used and how much is free.
2. To see the container and every volume in it, choose View > Show All Devices.
3. Select an item and click the Info button in the toolbar for details, including available space. Apple notes that this figure can include purgeable space (Apple).

Looking is harmless. Don't click Erase, Partition or Restore unless you mean to; those change the disk.

Check storage in Terminal

On current versions of macOS, your files and apps live on a separate Data volume. This shows its size, used and available space:

df -H /System/Volumes/Data

Two things to know about df:

• -H counts in units of 1,000, the same as Finder. With -h it counts in units of 1,024, so every number looks smaller.
• Don't use df -h / on its own. The / volume is the sealed, read-only copy of macOS, so its Used column shows only the system, not your files.

For the free space shared by all the volumes in the container:

diskutil info / | grep -E "Container (Total|Free) Space"

Both commands only read. df and diskutil report free space without purgeable space, so Finder's Available is often higher.

Check an external drive, and what kind of storage you have

Storage settings is about the internal disk. Its All Volumes view lists other disks but doesn't break them down. For an external drive, select it in the Finder sidebar and press ⌘I, or select it in Disk Utility. Both show its capacity and available space.

To see whether your Mac has an SSD or a hard disk, and the internal disk's full capacity, open System Information: choose Apple menu > About This Mac, click More Info, then click System Report at the bottom of the window (Apple). Under Hardware, click Storage. Each volume is listed with its free space and capacity, and the Medium Type line says SSD for a solid-state drive.

Why the numbers don't match

Every tool above is right about something different:

• Purgeable space. System Settings and Finder count it as available. df and diskutil don't, because it's still on the disk.
• Units. Finder says GB, in units of 1,000. Terminal's -h says Gi, in units of 1,024.
• Volumes share space. Free space belongs to the container, so it's the same number for every volume in it.
• Categories versus folders. Storage settings sorts files into categories and puts the remainder in System Data. Finder measures folders.

If the gap is big and none of this explains it, when Mac storage doesn't add up goes through the causes, including local Time Machine snapshots.

If Storage keeps calculating

Sometimes the Storage view shows Calculating for a long time, or seems to calculate forever. Apple doesn't document a cause. Storage measures every category before it shows them, so it's slowest after a macOS update, a migration or a large copy. Try these in order:

1. Wait a few minutes with the Storage view open.
2. Quit System Settings and open Storage again.
3. Restart your Mac and give it a few minutes after you log in.
4. Use another tool in the meantime. Finder's Get Info, Disk Utility and df show used and free space straight away, because they don't sort anything into categories.
5. Rebuild the Spotlight index if it never finishes. People on Apple Community report this fixing a stuck Storage view, though not every time (Apple Community).

To rebuild the index, Apple's steps are: open Spotlight (or Siri & Spotlight) in System Settings, click Search Privacy (Spotlight Privacy in some versions), add Macintosh HD to the list, wait a few seconds, select it, remove it, and click Done. Spotlight then indexes the disk again. Apple says a full index can take hours, or even days on a disk with a lot of data, and finishes sooner when the Mac is idle and plugged in (Apple). Rebuilding the index doesn't touch your files.

What's safe to remove and what isn't

Checking storage is only reading, so nothing here is at risk. When you move on to freeing space, the categories in Storage settings are a fair guide to what's yours to manage:

• Yours to manage: Applications, Documents, iOS Files, Music and TV, Messages, Mail and the Trash. You choose what goes.
• Managed by macOS: macOS and System Data. Apple says you can't manage the contents of System Data from Storage settings; parts of it are yours, explained in how to clear System Data.
• Frees itself: purgeable space. There's nothing to remove.
• Someone else's: Other Users & Shared. Leave other accounts to their owners.

For the next step, how to free up space on your Mac goes through the recommendations and the big categories.

How MacClearings shows storage: the Overview

The Overview in MacClearings shows your startup disk as one ring. Gray is what you keep. Color is what MacClearings could move to the Trash after you review it, split by kind: developer files, caches, logs and so on. Purgeable and free space are shown separately, so you can see what macOS will free by itself.

Below the ring are your free space, how much was scanned, what's waiting in the Cleanup tray, and how much of what you freed stayed free, measured again after each cleanup. The biggest folders in your home folder are listed with their sizes, and recent cleanups link to History, where each one can be undone. The menu bar extra shows free space at a glance.

When the System Settings numbers are the confusing part, the Breakdown section starts from the same numbers macOS reports, explains purgeable space, local snapshots and swap, and shows whatever it can't see as a number rather than hiding it.

MacClearings only reads until you review a list and choose Move to Trash, and it never empties the Trash. Space you free comes back when you empty it.