I'm trying to delete some files from my iPhone's **Files** app, and I am getting a pop-up message: **"Filename" couldn't be moved to ".Trash" because there isn't enough space.** The volume "User" is out of space. OK 📱🤦 = The first thing I try when running out of space is *try to free up space in files.app* I presume this can't be done by first moving files to .Trash and that a **Delete Immediately** option is needed. I'd like an automation Workflow that will delete files immediately. **Note:** This is not an emergency. I will eventually be able to solve this by moving photos onto my Mac, but while I'm not near my computer or don't have time for that, a quick-and-easy fix would be nice to have. And there are some media files on my iPhone that also exist elsewhere, so I am fine with deleting this redundant data. I am not asking about what to do about an iPhone that is inoperable or won't boot. There is already [a Q&A for that](https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/465593/) . I am specifically asking if there is a way to remove data from Files that doesn't require a lot of memory overhead. My phone is still working and can restart. **What are my options?**

Can an automation workflow be created that will delete files immediately from iPhone? This would be useful when the iPhone is too full to Delete by first moving to the Trash.

How to create a RAM drive (a.k.a. RAM disk) in macOS Ventura ? The Apple App Store lists only a single app for creating a RAM drive. And apparently that app does not actually work, per review comments. For the curious… Reasons to use a RAM drive include: - Avoid needlessly wearing out storage device, whether solid-state or spinning-rust . - Avoid polluting a continuous back-up mechanism, such as Time Machine on macOS , with multiple copies of rewritten files that we'll never need. - Avoid delays waiting for writes-to-storage to complete. RAM is *much* faster than storage, even solid-state storage (“SSD”). These problems are more acute for people developing and/or testing software. Modern file systems perform smart caching in RAM. However, this does not mitigate the problems in the above bullet-list.

Can someone explain what triggers the downloading of music files to my iPad mini? I have been enjoying the *Apple Music Classical* app daily, and occasionally the *Apple Music* app. I want to remember albums, performers, and composers. But I do not have enough storage to download the music. Unfortunately, my iPad is mysteriously filling its storage with downloaded music files. I have not tried to download any of them, I just want to stream only. But the downloads just keep coming. I have been deleting the music files individually in the Settings app > Apps > Music > Downloaded Music. But they keep on reappearing. It has become a near daily battle of deleting one file after another tediously, just to keep my iPad mini operational. I have turned off “Automatic Downloads.” I have been marking many things as “favorite” so that I might find them again later. But according to the manual and the AIs this should not trigger downloading.

- Typical camera software (Capture One, Lightroom, and others) has special workflow behaviors for devices flagged by the operating system as removable media. (Personally, I'm trying to use the Capture One "Delete after import" flag). - MacOS flags some CFExpress devices as non-removable SSDs rather than removable media (References: (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254919311?sortBy=rank) , (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252410911) , (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252153280?sortBy=rank)) . This appears not to be specific to MacOS; there are similar reports on Windows and Linux, though in the latter it can be overridden by udev rules. - CFExpress is increasingly common for cameras that require high write performance Is there a way to solve this by updating MacOS configuration (as udev rules can override the way hardware presents itself on Linux), or do we need to be making feature requests to the developers of software that trusts the operating system's designation of devices as removable or otherwise to allow that designation to be overridden? ---

$ diskutil info /dev/disk4
   Device Identifier:         disk4
   Device Node:               /dev/disk4
   Whole:                     Yes
   Part of Whole:             disk4
   Device / Media Name:       TAPIR SANSA_20 Media

   Volume Name:               Not applicable (no file system)
   Mounted:                   Not applicable (no file system)
   File System:               None

   Content (IOContent):       FDisk_partition_scheme
   OS Can Be Installed:       No
   Media Type:                Generic
   Protocol:                  USB
   SMART Status:              Not Supported

   Disk Size:                 512.1 GB (512110190592 Bytes) (exactly 1000215216 512-Byte-Units)
   Device Block Size:         512 Bytes

   Media OS Use Only:         No
   Media Read-Only:           No
   Volume Read-Only:          Not applicable (no file system)

   Device Location:           External
   Removable Media:           Fixed

   Solid State:               Yes
   Virtual:                   No

Note Removable Media: Fixed.

I upgraded from *El Capitan* to *Catalina* **10.15.5** on a *MacbookPro mid-2012* , the oldest HW that Catalina will run on. Then, I created a RAID-1 drive using 2 USB disks. "*About This Mac* --> *Storage*" is **not** showing a logical 500-gb RAID-1 drive, the 500-gb disk RAID member, and the 500-gb partition RAID member is not displayed, but the 1-tb disk for this partition, and the other 500-gb partition on the same disk, **is** displayed. On the other hand: (1) "*Go -> Utility -> Disk Utility* ", (2) "*Finder*", and (3) command-line utilities all show the correct drive structure: the logical RAID-1 drive, the 2 physical disks, the 2 partitions of the 1-tb disk. Further, the amount of available drive space, on all disks, all agree. note: I did a major reorg of my data when I upgraded to Catalina. My internal disk is SSD, and Catalina automatically formatted it to APFS. Next, I emptied the 500-gb and 1-tb disks into a 2-tb disk. I decided to re-format both (hfs+). Using Catalina's RAID tool, I created the RAID-1 drive. Everything, except "*About This Mac* --> *Storage*", looks great so I am proceeding. So, I'm just reporting this and thinking this has something to do with a mid-2012 MacBook Pro being the oldest HW to support Catalina. Since data is critical to me these days, please tell me if I should be concerned about the strange "*About This Mac --> Storage*" result.

I have an external volume (an SSD by Sandisk connected via a usb-c cable) rated at 1TB. Finder (macOS 14.5) says the disk is full (when I try to add a file it errors with: **No space left on device (28)** however when I look at the sizes of the directories on the external volume, of which there are two, one is called Movies and the other TV, the sizes do not add up at ALL: adding these two folder sizes adds up to a little over 700GB and nowhere near the 1000GB used as claimed by "Get Info" in Finder on the volume. Now I realize there could be hidden directories that are trouble so I looked at those using Cmd+Shift+. as you can see in the following screenshot: The only directory (of those hidden) that has more than 10MB is .Spotlight-V100 as can be seen here: Maybe the size on disk here is actually much larger than reported? To get to the bottom of things I also approached it from a different angle and ran the du and ncdu utilities in the terminal, the output of which is again attached here: These outputs lead me to believe the sizes of Movies and TV can be more or less trusted, however for .Spotlight-V100 and .Trashes unfortunately there seems to be no or wrong info for a permission issue. I am out of my knowledge here - maybe this is an exFAT specific problem? Should I try delete the Spotlight directory as a first step? Any help much appreciated! :) Also if anybody needs any more data, just comment. One last image of the info output from disk utility:

I have photos synced through iCloud to my Mac. This is good. I like to be able to see the pictures big! However I don't have a lot of storage space and the library seems to grow and grow, even though I have checked "Optimize Mac Storage", but it doesn't seem to do anything. I recently got the message "There is not enough disk space to open your library." when trying to open the “Photos” app. Is there a trick to get it to *actually* optimize storage? Or a way to prune some files that are currently saved to disk? I've seen a lot of other questions where people don't want their photos library on their Mac.. I would like to use the Photos application as I really like it other than this issue. I just want to also be able to have a computer with enough free space to operate.

After turning off iCloud sync for Music and Photos, how do I remove the songs and photos that are already there? I'm setting up an iPad which has a very small amount of storage. I had hoped that iCloud services would intelligently use the space so I could prioritize apps, and only use storage for photos and songs when it was available. However it quickly loaded 7.4 gigs of songs and 4 gigs of images. When I wanted to install more apps, it refused. So I turned off sync for my music library and my photo library. I thought this would remove the songs and photos. I've restarted the iPad and searched the interfaces. Is there any way to remove these songs and images? Note, if I need to reset the iPad and restore from a backup, that's ok. I'm wondering if the backup I make now will preserve the settings I have now, which would imply that no photos or songs should be loaded.

I have used **iCloud** on my Mac to store my **Desktop and Documents** folders for years. I have an extra terabyte of iCloud storage that I'm not using, so I'd like to let a family member use it. I have enabled "Family" in System Settings, and invited the family member, who has accepted (there is an explicit message that "All plans can be shared with up to five family members"). But, the other person is still getting a warning that iCloud Drive is **full at 5 GB**. Can anyone confirm that it is possible to share iCloud Storage between family members, and point me to what I might be doing wrong? **Is there some difference between iCloud and iCloud+** that might be at work? My main computer just says iCloud in the settings, but the family members' computer says "Upgrade to iCloud+ for more storage".

I don't need spotlight on macOS 10.15 Catalina. Referencing https://apple.stackexchange.com/q/400812/ Here's a picture of my spotlight thing, which was only visible when I paid the $10 for daisydisk When I double click down on this thing it has files like dbStr-2.map.data which is 189gb etc, but on the internet it says to never delete file that start with dbStr... because the mac will be irreparably ruined. I'm a PC guy, let's be honest. So, can I just drag those hateful green sectors into the circle on the bottom that says "Drag and drop files here to collect them" Also, I typed sudo mdutil -i off. Is that going to mean spotlight doesn't make another enormous index on by 500gb disk like a cancer?

I recently got a notification that I was low on disk space, which is odd because last I had checked a few days ago I still had several hundred gigabytes available. In settings, it said that "System Data" was nearly 400gb, but didn't give any details. Eventually, I found that the CoreSpotlight folder in Users//Library/Metadata was 336gb, which seems excessive. Why is this? Are there any files that I can/should delete, or any way to fix this? It's causing me to run so low on disk space that the system keeps hanging and crashing entirely.

I am trying to copy files to an external HD on macOS Sequoia The remote server (WebDAV) mounted via Finder -> Go -> Connect The problem is that using sync, the local Machintosh HD runs out of space during the copy. - I tried to avoid caching or setting tmp folders to the external HD, but whatever I do, the space available on the local HD keeps going down during the copy. - The local HD went from 20GB free to 0.5GB during the file transfer, till all stopped because of it. This is an example of the rsync command I use and my shell is zsh: rsync -hvrPt --temp-dir=/Volumes/USB_DRIVE/tmp --max-size=1000M --no-partial /Volumes/dgk.data.uu.nl/research-***/***/***/*.fast5 /Volumes/USB_DRIVE/fast5_pass --temp-dir --max-size and --no-partial were used to avoid clogging my local HD during the transfer, but it didn't work. How can I transfer 500GB from a remote server to a USB drive without using the local HD space (only 20GB free)???

I have a 64 GB USB-C flash stick from Samsung that was new in October 2024, which I formatted with a tool from my car's manufacturer that it insisted on. Making it a ExFAT volume that contains map updates and optionally media like MP3s. I had success reading it in the car, and success adding media to it using the Mac when I was on MacOS 14 Sonoma. Now I insert it on my updated MacBook running MacOS 15 Sequoia, and it just doesn't mount. It shows up in Disk Utility and as disk4 with disk4s1. Isn't ExFAT supported and shouldn't it work? I'll show you what I tried so far, and I wonder if there's something else I should try. Here's what the terminal says about mounting it read only:

dlamblin ~ % diskutil mount disk4s1
Volume on disk4s1 failed to mount
If you think the volume is supported but damaged, try the "readOnly" option
dlamblin ~ % diskutil mount readOnly disk4s1
Volume on disk4s1 failed to mount
If you think the volume is supported but damaged, try the "readOnly" option

Prepending sudo doesn't change the output to either of these. And perhaps you want to see what it says in Disk Utility: Oh, and First Aid complains about permissions, but the terminal version of diskutil doesn't behave any better with sudo permissions. E.G. with sudo:

dlamblin ~ % sudo diskutil mountDisk readOnly disk4
Volume(s) mounted successfully
dlamblin ~ % df -h
Filesystem        Size    Used   Avail Capacity iused ifree %iused  Mounted on
/dev/disk3s1s1   460Gi    10Gi   324Gi     4%    412k  3.4G    0%   /
devfs            208Ki   208Ki     0Bi   100%     720     0  100%   /dev
/dev/disk3s6     460Gi    15Gi   324Gi     5%      15  3.4G    0%   /System/Volumes/VM
/dev/disk3s2     460Gi   6.4Gi   324Gi     2%    1.2k  3.4G    0%   /System/Volumes/Preboot
/dev/disk3s4     460Gi   2.2Mi   324Gi     1%      51  3.4G    0%   /System/Volumes/Update
/dev/disk2s2     500Mi   6.0Mi   481Mi     2%       1  4.9M    0%   /System/Volumes/xarts
/dev/disk2s1     500Mi   5.4Mi   481Mi     2%      33  4.9M    0%   /System/Volumes/iSCPreboot
/dev/disk2s3     500Mi   2.7Mi   481Mi     1%      85  4.9M    0%   /System/Volumes/Hardware
/dev/disk3s5     460Gi   102Gi   324Gi    24%    1.0M  3.4G    0%   /System/Volumes/Data
map auto_home      0Bi     0Bi     0Bi   100%       0     0     -   /System/Volumes/Data/home
/dev/disk3s7     460Gi   2.0Gi   324Gi     1%    139k  3.4G    0%   /nix
/dev/disk3s3     460Gi   986Mi   324Gi     1%      38  3.4G    0%   /Volumes/Recovery
dlamblin ~ % sudo diskutil verifyDisk disk4s1
A whole disk must be specified
dlamblin ~ % sudo diskutil repairDisk disk4s1
A whole disk must be specified
dlamblin ~ % sudo diskutil verifyDisk disk4
Unable to verify this whole disk: A GUID Partition Table (GPT) partitioning scheme is required (-69773)
dlamblin@ ~ % sudo diskutil repairDisk disk4
Unable to repair this whole disk: A GUID Partition Table (GPT) partitioning scheme is required (-69773)

Maybe it's MBR partitioned now? But again, it worked before. Was there some MBR support I forgot I added to Sonoma that I should add or enable? **Updates per comment requests**: Again, kindly note that I can read the contents of this USB stick in my car, and on a Windows machine. I can modify them if I like. I cannot mount it at all on my MacBook Pro 16 Nov 2023 with Sequoia 15.3.1.

➜  ~ sudo fsck_exfat -q /dev/disk4s1
QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN
➜  ~ sudo fsck_exfat -d -n /dev/disk4s1
** Checking volume.
** Checking main boot region.
125313091 total sectors; 512 bytes per sector
FAT starts at sector 2048; size 3840 sectors
489480 clusters starting at sector 6144; 131072 bytes per cluster
Root directory starts at cluster 4
Read      offset = 0x000000100000  length = 0x001000
** Checking system files.
Read      offset = 0x000000340000  length = 0x020000
Found active bitmap; first cluster 2, length 61185
** Checking upper case translation table.
Read      offset = 0x000000320000  length = 0x020000
Found upcase table; starting cluster 3, length 5836
** Checking file system hierarchy.
Directory /
Directory /System Volume Information
File      /.lge.upgrade.xml.enc
Directory /HU
Directory /whatsnew
File      /2023_GV60_USA.ver
File      /$TXRAJNL.DAT
Read      offset = 0x000000360000  length = 0x020000
File      /System Volume Information/WPSettings.dat
File      /System Volume Information/IndexerVolumeGuid
Read      offset = 0x0000003c0000  length = 0x020000
Directory /HU/images
Directory /HU/firmware
Read      offset = 0x000242c80000  length = 0x020000
File      /whatsnew/whatsnew.tar.gz.enc
Read      offset = 0x0000003e0000  length = 0x020000
File      /HU/images/coconut-rootfs.tar.gz.enc
File      /HU/images/coconut-vr_NAM.tar.gz.enc
File      /HU/images/A_gos2-fs_20_qnx.img.enc
File      /HU/images/kernel-update-CLU.tar.gz.enc
File      /HU/images/kernel-update.tar.gz.enc
File      /HU/images/kernel-updater.enc
File      /HU/images/navi_NAM.md5_.enc
File      /HU/images/navi_NAM.tar.gz
File      /HU/images/nav_NAM_JW.sign
Read      offset = 0x000000400000  length = 0x020000
File      /HU/firmware/update.tar.gz.enc
** Checking active bitmap.
Checking bitmap cluster 2
Read      offset = 0x000000300000  length = 0x020000
0 clusters were marked used, but not referenced
0 clusters were marked used and CLUST_BAD
0 clusters were marked free, but referenced
** Rechecking main boot region.
** Rechecking alternate boot region.
** The volume  appears to be OK.
➜  ~ sudo fsck_exfat -y /dev/disk4s1
fsck_exfat: Opened /dev/rdisk4s1 read-only
** Checking volume.
** Checking main boot region.
** Checking system files.
** Checking upper case translation table.
** Checking file system hierarchy.
** Checking active bitmap.
** Rechecking main boot region.
** Rechecking alternate boot region.
** The volume  appears to be OK.
➜  ~ sudo diskutil mount disk4s1
Volume on disk4s1 failed to mount
If you think the volume is supported but damaged, try the "readOnly" option
➜  ~

~ sudo fdisk /dev/disk4
Disk: /dev/disk4	geometry: 7800/255/63 [125313283 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: 07    0   3   4 - 1023 254  63 [       192 -  125313091] HPFS/QNX/AUX
 2: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused      
 3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused      
 4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused

I also tried a different mount command; confused that I got a permissions bases error.

➜  ~ sudo mkdir -p /Volumes/samsung; sudo mount_exfat /dev/disk4s1 /Volumes/samsung
mount_exfat: /dev/disk4s1 on /Volumes/samsung: Operation not permitted
➜  ~ sudo rmdir /Volumes/samsung

The terminal shows I still have 512GB of space but only 410 is being used in the MacBook Pro, rest is classified as (free space). The disk Utility doesn't show the 84GB anywhere either, is any of the partitions, but the full disk still shows the 512GB. How do I add this (free space) back to my main SSD?

I noticed something called "legacyScreenSaver" takes 67GB on disk and feel it’s too much for me. I looked deeper, and I found that it's actually for the screen saver I do use, Aerial. It's in /Users/[user]/Containers/legacyScreenSaver/Data/Library/Application Support/Aerial/, and 59GB of that 67GB is in a cache I'm using a different screensaver. OK to delete legacyScreenSaver?

Suppose user A creates a folder in iCloud Drive, and shares this folder with user B (with edit access). Do the contents of this folder count towards the iCloud storage quota of user A alone ? Or do they also count towards user B quota? Does it matter if the files inside are added by user A or user B?

I recently switched to a new iPad and need to transfer all my artwork from Procreate to the new device. I want to ensure that I don’t lose any files, layers, or custom palettes. Since Procreate doesn’t have built-in cloud sync, I’m unsure of the best way to transfer everything efficiently. Could someone guide me on the easiest and safest way to move my Procreate files?

(I'm running Sequoia 15.2 on an M1 2020 Macbook Air.) See screenshot below. It's been like this for two days. Part of the problem here is presumably that there is not enough available disk space to complete the analysis (only 40 GB free). But that's precisely the reason I am trying to look in Storage to find out what's taking up all my space! In contrast, OmniDiskSweeper is only able to find 1.4 TB (see second screenshot below), so there is about half a TB unaccounted for. That's a lot of missing space! Any ideas what's going on or what I can do about it?

I've two kids under 13 set up in my Family Sharing with access to my 2TB iCloud storage. For some reason, my son has an amount set of 5GB, which is way too low for what he needs on his iPad. His sister has way more (over 200GB) and I don't understand why. I've been looking on forums to see if and how I can change this 5GB limit (as I've plenty of memory available), but I haven't found anything yet. Can anyone advise me on how I can sort this out?