However, if you prefer to remove the purgeable space then one way is to use one of the third party software like CleanMyMac X, DaisyDisk, etc…Īnother way is to manually free up the storage space by removing the purgeable file. macOS will automatically remove them when the system needs more free-space. Normally, you don’t need to remove the purgeable file form the storage space.

Abandoned files and cache which are left after uninstalling an application.

If a local file is synced with iCloud, then the local file is considered as purgeable.

Old files which are not used for a long time.

Until then, these snapshot files are classified as purgeable files. These files are automatically purged when the backup disk is accessible by time machine.

If the backup disk is not accessible by time machine, it uses the local storage to store the snapshots.

Here is the list of few of the major contributors of purgeable space: Purgeable storage is the space occupied by files in the drive which were identified by the macOS system as removable in case if it needs more free-space. I would like to share what I learned and what I did to free up some of the space in my laptop.

On searching, I figured out the details of purgeable storage and how to reduce them. After getting the answer for difference in free space shown in different windows, I got couple of more questions:

How to check macbook hard drive space