Apr 07, 2017 Apps from the Mac App Store. It won’t work. You’ll see an “App Name can’t be opened because it is from an unidentified developer” message. Open a Terminal window. Press Command+Space, type “Terminal”, and press Enter to launch one. Or, you can open a Finder window and head to Applications Utilities Terminal. Feb 05, 2017 I have a mac pro 1 1 in my basement running as a backup server, central media location, etc. One of the HDDs in it is a 3TB WD Red drive. Basically, at one point I had this broken up into about 4 different partitions one for each computer backup (mom's laptop, my sisters macbook, my macbook etc) and then one for random storage. Nov 14, 2019 Choose the Apple menu Restart. Or press and hold the power button and, when a dialog box appears, click the Restart or press R. Restarting your Mac essentially clears your macOS’s memory and starts it up fresh. Incorrectly formatted drive. Not every external drive is optimized for Macs. Quit 'Terminal.app' and start 'Disk Utility' and verify the expanded volume. Reboot to Recovery HD and your main drive. Delete the disk image created in step 5 if everything works as expected; If that didn't work then the longer and harder way: enter diskutil list.
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Local storage is one of the most important things to manage on your Mac. And generally, it’s pretty easy. But how do you go about clearing out storage that’s “purgeable”?
Contents
- 2 How to clear out Purgeable Space
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Based on the name, you may think that purgeable space is simple to get rid of. But Apple doesn’t make it very easy. As a workaround, it could require some technical tweaking. In any case, here’s everything you need to know about purgeable storage on your Mac.
What is Purgeable Space?
In a nutshell, purgeable storage refers to files or documents on your disk that macOS can remove if more space is needed. Don’t worry, macOS isn’t going to delete any of your important files — the files in purgeable space are actually more of a redundancy feature.
To see how much purgeable space is on your Mac, you can head to Apple menu —> About This Mac —> Storage. Purgeable space shows up as white space with a diagonal gray pattern over the top (see above).
But what files or documents does the purgeable storage category actually refer to? Well, there are a couple of things that fall into it, including the following:
- Locally stored copies of files that you have stored in iCloud. This helps speed up opening those files if you need them.
- Full-resolution versions of photos stored in iCloud (that can be downsampled if needed).
- Various cached data and temporary system files that macOS can delete if necessary.
- Large font files that you rarely use, or may never use.
- Dictionaries that you haven’t used or accessed in a while.
- Movies and TV shows that you’ve already watched. (And, if deleted, can easily be re-downloaded from iTunes.)
- Locally stored Time Machine data, which is separate from the backups on your Time Machine drive.
- There are also reports that data sent to Trash but not deleted immediately will show up as purgeable space.
As you might notice, there’s another element to purgeable storage: guesswork. For many of the data categories, macOS is making an educated guess as to whether or not you’ll actually need or access those files anytime soon.
While macOS will theoretically clear out purgeable space as needed, there are some instances when it may not do so. If you’re trying to partition your drive, download a major software update or install a large app, you may run into a brick wall. That’s because purgeable space is technically still “allocated” system storage.
How to clear out Purgeable Space
So purgeable space is space that isn’t necessary, so you can go about safely clearing it out, right? Theoretically, yes. But the problem is that the fact that Apple doesn’t allow users to clear out purgeable space manually.
There are a few other options and workarounds for clearing out additional space on your Mac’s drive, including purgeable storage, however. Here are a few that work.
Method 1: Optimize Mac Storage
Apple first introduced the idea of purgeable space back in macOS Sierra, when it also debuted a new Optimized Storage feature to the Mac ecosystem.
There are conflicting reports about whether Optimize Storage actually causes purgeable space or whether it can help clear it out. But while your own mileage may vary, heading to Optimize Storage and trying out some of the options are worth a shot.
- Click on the Apple icon in the top menu bar.
- Click About This Mac.
- In the window that pops up, click on Storage to bring up the storage pane.
- Click the Manage button.
From here, you should see a number of options that could help clear out the storage space on your Mac. That includes storing files and photos in iCloud, optimizing storage by clearing out email attachments and media content, emptying the trash automatically and reducing clutter.
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Try these out and see if it makes a difference on your purgeable storage.
Method 2: Open up that Terminal
You can also “force” macOS to clear out purgeable storage by attempting to download or install a large file. It can be hard to find a file large enough to fill your Mac’s disk, but you can just create one yourself.
This method relies on using the Terminal, so you may want to skip it if you aren’t comfortable with Terminal commands. In any case, it’s effective (as noted by its creator, software engineer Brian Ambielli.)
Note: System commands like these can be dangerous. Make sure to copy and paste the following commands or type them exactly as they appear.
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- Open the Terminal app by typing that into the Spotlight search bar.
- Type the following command into the Terminal window:
mkdir ~/largefiles
- Hit Return.
- Now, type in this command:
dd if=/dev/random of=~/largefiles/largefile bs=15m
(It’s normal for your Terminal to look like it’s frozen. That’s just the command at work.) - After about five minutes or so, hit Control + C in Terminal to stop the previous command.
- Now, type in this command:
cp ~/largefiles/largefile ~/largefiles/largefile2
- Once that’s done, type the same command in, but change the last number to “3.” After it runs, change the last number to “4,” and so on.
- You’ll want to continue this cycle until you see a macOS message appear that says “disk is critically low.”
- Once you do, type in and execute this command:
rm -rf ~/largefiles/
- Head to the Trash Bin and empty it.
Essentially, what this is doing is creating a single large file and storing it in a system folder called “largefiles.” Then, using the third terminal command, you’re actually copying the large file in its entirety over and over again.
The last command will delete all of the large files. (Though they’ll keep taking up storage until you clear out the Trash Bin.)
Note that you won’t be able to achieve similar results by just copying a large file over and over again in Finder. That’s because if you just use copy/paste or Command + D, macOS actually just creates a reference to the old file instead of creating a brand new file.
Method 3: A Third-Party App
There are also third-party apps, like CleanMyMac, that can help you achieve similar results. It’s an option, but we recommend it the least out of the options on this list.
For the most part, many of these apps are bloated and contain unnecessary features. And, unless you’re careful about the app you download and the permission you give it, there’s a risk of malicious activity, too.
The kicker is that most of these apps aren’t free. Or, if they are, they’ll only let you perform certain activities without paying for a premium membership.
Of course, if Optimize Storage isn’t helping and you’re 100% not comfortable with Terminal, then a third-party app may be your best bet.
Mike is a freelance journalist from San Diego, California.
While he primarily covers Apple and consumer technology, he has past experience writing about public safety, local government, and education for a variety of publications.
He’s worn quite a few hats in the journalism field, including writer, editor, and news designer.
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OS X's command line and I have never been what I'd call 'friendly'; rather, we have a mutual respect and understanding about not messing with each other. (Well, as much of a mutual respect as one can have between a human being and a code window.)
While the average person should never have any reason to visit Terminal, Apple's command line interface app actually does give you access to quite a few neat tricks and shortcuts... if you're willing to take a peek.
What is Terminal?
Apple's Terminal app is a direct interface to OS X's bash shell — part of its UNIX underpinnings. When you open it, Terminal presents you with a white text screen, logged in with your OS X user account by default.
Here's the important part: With a system administrator account and password, you have direct access to tweaking almost everything about your computer's software code; that means that while this little window provides great power, it comes with great responsibility. In short, be careful before using Terminal to execute commands, and make sure you understand what you're typing.
You can also use Terminal to securely connect to other machines, web servers, and even create your own scripts, but those are how-tos for another day. For now, we're going to focus on using Terminal to explore your own computer.
Basic Terminal commands you should know
Before we get started with the fun stuff, let's learn some basic Terminal terminology and commands. These form the framework for more complex interactions (aka, the fun stuff).
How to execute a Terminal command
You can type something in the Terminal window until you're blue in the face, but it won't execute until you press the Return key on your keyboard. At that point, it will either return an error if you've typed something incorrectly, or the command will execute.
Unless you're executing a command that requires the display of text in Terminal, you won't have any indicator that what you've done has been successful; you'll just get a new line with your user name on it once the command is finished processing.
When writing commands and paths in Terminal, almost everything is case sensitive: This means that you need to remember to properly capitalize 'Dock' when referring to the Dock, or OS X won't understand your command.
What's a path?
You can use Terminal to get direct access to your files without using the Finder. To do so, you build something called a path. Paths look similar in some ways to website sub-directories, and follow the structure of your folders.
Paths take two forms: absolute paths and relative paths. An absolute path starts at the root level of your hard drive, and is displayed as '/'. So if you wanted to make a path to your Applications folder, you would write '/Applications/'.
Relative paths are defined based on where you've already navigated to, and represented by './'. For instance, if you go to the '/Applications/' folder in Terminal, that's your current working directory (cwd). You can then get to your Utilities folder by typing './Utilities/' rather than '/Applications/Utilities'.
When you first launch Terminal, you're starting in the current working directory of /Users/myusername/ (also known as your User folder).
How to display and move between files in Terminal
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To actually put all this path knowledge to use, you'll need the Terminal commands for displaying and changing files.
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ls: The 'ls' command, by itself, displays the contents of the cwd. So if I were just to type 'ls' in Terminal, it would display the contents of my user directory:
You can optionally add an absolute or relative or path if you want to view a different directories. So, for example, if I wanted to view the Utilities folder inside Applications, I could type 'ls /Applications/Utilities/'. This won't change your current working directory, but it'll let you view other directories on your hard drive.
You can add options to view more information about that directory. The options for 'ls' include:
- -l, which lets you view the permissions of each file in the directory
- -R, which will not only show each folder in the directory, but all their files, as well
- -a, which will show any hidden files in the current directory
cd: Where the 'ls' command lets you view a directory, the 'cd' command will actually move to that directory (change your cwd). For instance, if after viewing the Utilities folder, you want to move to it, you'd type 'cd /Applications/Utilities/'.
pwd: Write this command by itself to help you remember the path of your current directory. When typed into terminal, it will print the full path of your cwd.
man: This command, followed by another Unix command, lets you read the Unix manual about the second command. This is super useful if you want to try a cool Terminal trick you found online, but aren't sure what those commands actually do.
For instance, typing 'man ls' will get you information on the 'ls' command, which lists directory contents.
How to modify files, folders, and preferences in Terminal
defaults: This command is often used in Terminal tips and tricks to tweak applications and system settings via their preference files. You can use it to do things like disable transparency in the menu bar, always show your scroll bars, change trackpad behavior, and much much more. You'll usually see this paired with either 'write' and a string, as with this:
The code above lets you save all your screenshots as JPGs instead of the system default PNG.
killall: If you execute a Terminal command that affects any system process or app, you're going to need to reboot the process to make it take effect. 'killall' followed by the process will do so. (This is also another way to force quit misbehaving apps or processes if your Force Quit menu isn't behaving.) Remember, this command and its target are case sensitive.
ln: OS X has long offered aliases, which let you create links to files, folders, and applications elsewhere in the system without having to duplicate them. Unfortunately, certain apps don't play well with aliases. With the link command 'ln -s', you can create a low-level, UNIX-based symbolic link which most system processes will recognize. Likely, you'll never have to make a symbolic link, but on the off-chance you want to perform a Terminal trick that requires them, this is how you do it.
The first path listed is your original file's path; the second path is where you'd like your symbolic link.
chflags: This commands lets you view and change the flags on a file or folder. For most people, the only flags you're going to care about are 'hidden' and 'nohidden', which hide and unhide documents, respectively.
sudo: If you spend any time online, you've probably heard of 'sudo' before. This is Unix's override command, and lets you execute any command as an administrator — provided, of course, that you have the requisite password and permissions. It probably goes without saying, but as a Terminal beginner, it's generally a good idea not to mess with commands like 'sudo' unless you are 100 percent sure what you're doing.
How to use Terminal for fun and whimsy
say: Feeling lonely? You can make your computer say anything you like with the 'say' command, and you can even record it in audio format to your desktop, if you so choose.
telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl: This isn't technically something local to your Mac, but it's my all-time favorite Terminal trick. Some kind soul on the internet made an all-ASCII version of Star Wars: A New Hope; run the following code, and you'll be treated to a full showing. If it doesn't make you smile just a little bit, you might be dead inside.
macOS Catalina
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