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I have a 128gb MacBook Air running Lion. I am constantly having issues with disc space, but have no idea what is consuming it all. When I look at the disc utility break down, it says about 80% of the used space is taken up by 'Other' while the remaining 20% is photos, music and applications.

I've searched everywhere but have no idea what is using all this space. The biggest program I have on is Photoshop and perhaps XCode. I dont have any video files and I dont even tend to save .PSDs.

Would anyone know what could be taking up this space?

Thanks!

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4 Answers 4

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Grand Perspective is a bit of open source software that visualises the space taken up in a folder. Run it and look for the biggest squares. Hover your mouse over a square and the bottom left of the window shows you the full path to the file you are hovering over.

I prefer it to letting the finder calculate folder sizes, because this is much faster and the results are very easy to understand.

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  • I use this all the time. Works really well.
    – Chris A
    Commented Jan 27, 2013 at 5:52
  • Yes this worked well! I found that iTunes had 'helpfully' saved all my apps from 3 iPhones and and iPad, as well as consolidating a bunch of old video files into its movies folder. Really useful tool! Thanks
    – MeltingDog
    Commented Jan 28, 2013 at 0:11
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If you don't want to get a tool like What Size (also on the App Store) or Daisy Disk, you can simply tell finder to calculate all sizes by ticking the second lowest check mark in the view options (Command-J) and browse your computer in list view:

Finder view options

Click on Size to sort by size and drill down into folders clicking the triangle next to the largest folders until you have your culprits.

Finder list view

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One more suggestion: OmniDiskSweeper, free and fast: http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnidisksweeper/

edited to add: Plus Omnidisksweeper has the advantage of being able to delete the files or directories in the application if you come across huge files you're sure you don't want. (it deletes them not put in the trash)

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I would just say hunt around in Finder, right click folders you think may be huge, and choose "Get Info". It will show a dialog box that tells you the exact size of the folder.

Start in "Macintosh HD", and right click each folder in there and Get Info. Go into the biggest ones there and root out the biggest folders that way.

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  • You might want to "Get Info" on only 1 folder at a time, because it might take a while Calculating size and if you do more than 1 folder at a time, it will take longer still
    – bobobobo
    Commented Jan 27, 2013 at 1:44

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