How to Free Up Space on MacBook Air for iOS Update Using iCloud

icloudiosmacosssd

I have a Macbook Air with 121gb of storage on a SSD. I use iCloud and have approx 1.5TB of data in the cloud. I have clicked optimise storage and I now only have 8GB lefton my SSD, so not enough space to complete the latest iOS update.

I have read that optimise storage leaves a percentage of disk space free, however, it doesn't appear to have allowed enough!

If I un click optimise storage, it tries to download everything.

Is there anyway that I can keep all my files in the cloud and just use them there and not download any of them onto my HD?

Best Answer

Yes - when you untick the check mark for Photos or Documents (likely the two largest items of iCloud space) you are asked if you want to keep a local copy (which you _don’t want to do) or just let the items live in the cloud (which you want - at least temporarily).

Choose to delete the local copy and then you will have the files only in iCloud.

Keep in mind, that after you delete files, macOS will keep space allocated / file content around for a short time as local snapshots or local time machine backups, so you will want to either thin the local snapshots or wait a day for them to age out.

Why does my mac not have free space even after I delete files?

Worst case - you can get an application like Daisy Disk (paid on the App Store, but a free trial from their web site - which has the bonus feature of letting you run a scan as administrator) and it makes it very simple to purge these temporary files sooner if you need. The app also does an amazing job showing you other large uses of space if my guess is wrong about documents and photos being your major space allocations.

Related Solutions

MacOS – preset the hibernation file size on a Mac so that it can always hibernate

I don't think there is a way you can affect the size of the file /var/vm/sleepimage, which is the file created when the mac hibernates. You can move the location to which the file is saved to another drive instead of the boot volume using the command:

sudo pmset -a hibernatefile /Volumes/OtherDrive/sleepimage

This other drive can be an external HD or perhaps a USB3 thumb drive. Another option is to purchase a Transcend Jetdrive to use for the sleepimage file, or, better yet, move files from the internal SSD to the Jetdrive.

I have doubled the capacity of my 128GB MBAir using a Transcend Jetdrive and it is more than fast enough for iTunes and iPhoto libraries.

macOS – Not Enough Storage for El Capitan; No Way to Free Up Space

Boot to Recovery Mode (hold cmdR while booting). In the menubar open Utilities -> Terminal.

Now change your working directory and go to /Volumes:

cd /Volumes

List all volumes:

ls -l

Move to your main volume

cd name_of_main_volume

Now you can move forward to a directory to remove files and folders with cd folder_name.

Appropriate paths to remove files or folders without touching your own data are:

/Volumes/name_of_main_volume/cores
/Volumes/name_of_main_volume/var/vm

Then remove files with rm file_name or rm *.* after making sure you are in the proper directory with pwd and checking all files with ls -l.

The folder cores may be empty, vm usually contains a sleep image and/or swap files which are all disposable.

If this doesn't suffice go to your applications or your user folder and remove files/folders.

To remove a folder use rm -R folder_name. In this case application files (e.g. Maps.app) are also folders!

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MacOS – preset the hibernation file size on a Mac so that it can always hibernate

macOS – Not Enough Storage for El Capitan; No Way to Free Up Space

Related Question