Mac Storage: 'Apps'

[Hoddo]

My machine is telling me I have 58gb worth of 'apps' on my system.

When I go to the applications folder there are a good few apps there but when I totalled there are only about 20gb worth of applications in there. What is taking up my space? Is there a tool I can use which clearly breakdown exactly what is eating my storage?

Also - how do I remove Garage Band? Don't need it and it is using 1.4gb.

[Hoddo]

The only software I have on the machine outside of the standard applications are Spotify, Sonos, and Wanderlist. There are also no iPhone or iPad backups on the laptop.

Outside of photos there is nothing on this machine.

Annoying.

[Hoddo]

megaphone said:

Have a look at ccleaner and disk inventory, may be of help. I have 22.9GB of apps on my iMac, I have all the Mac suite and Office for Mac, Final Cut Express, plus loads more. Interestingly I have 222GB of 'other' what ever that is! Emails and attachments I expect.

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/41220/ccleaner

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/14393/disk-invent...

The Disk Inventory tool is excellent. Thank you. Quickly identified about 7gb of files. Thank you.

[Hoddo]

NDA said:

What were the files out of interest?

My mail apps use the most space on my Air.... Yahoo particularly.

Although I thoroughly deleted and removed Google's Picasa there was over 7GB of files stored deeply in the library! Annoying.

[Hoddo]

NDA said:

What were the files out of interest?

My mail apps use the most space on my Air.... Yahoo particularly.

Although I thoroughly deleted and removed Google's Picasa there was over 7GB of files stored deeply in the library! Annoying.

[Hoddo]

Here is a head scratcher.

Under the 'About This Mac' storage menu it says I have 57GB of 'Apps' and 29GB of 'Photos'. When I run the OmniDiskSweeper (thank you for the recommendation) it says I have used ball park 56GB in total (including photos as you can see).

So here we have the question; where is the storage being taken as OmniDickSweeper is coming up 30GB short.

[Hoddo]

jmorgan said:

Two Application folders, anything for multiple log ins?

The Mrs has her own user account but there is nothing there. She uses once a month to buy a few items from Amazon. I can't see how that would take up space - am I missing something? Would the system map the whole operating system to create a new user? Even so, that wouldn't account for 30GB would it?

[Hoddo]

Leithen said:

It appears to be most commonly related to Omni being unable to read other user's accounts - see;

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2679135?tstar...

and

http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=930

Removed all other user accounts and it made zero difference! Incredibly frustrating.

May have to do a full system wipe and reinstall Yosemite.

[Hoddo]

qube_TA said:

/Applications doesn't store everything App-wise, you have a ton of supporting stuff in Library and ~/Library

Application Support for example will have a lot of content.

On my machines these folders are far larger than /Applications. It depends upon what you have installed as to what's likely to be there.

It's worth noting that if you delete something from Applications it'll leave behind anything outside of that directory unless you manually delete those as well or use something like AppZapper to remove them automatically (handy for removing stuff like GarageBand that I was never going to use and is installed by default, takes up a load of space too).

I use AppCleaner for full deletion of apps. I do need to get rid of Garage Band, it is HUGE.

[Hoddo]

Update: I did a clean install of Yosemite and got brilliant results. As you can see my apps folder is now tiny (also removed Garage Band, iMovies etc).

One questions I now have is what on earth is in the 'Other' folder and what is typically stored in there?

[Hoddo]

Update: I did a clean install of Yosemite and got brilliant results. As you can see my apps folder is now tiny (also removed Garage Band, iMovies etc).

One questions I now have is what on earth is in the 'Other' folder and what is typically stored in there?

[Hoddo]

Riff Raff said:

It's worth bearing in mind that even if you do a clean install of OS X - by formatting the disk and then installing Yosemite - if you then restore your user account from a Time Machine backup, it puts back a load of junk left behind by applications you thought you'd deleted years ago. I was surprised to find that there was a load of stuff in the Library/Application Support folder that shouldn't have been there. As others have said, you have to clean it out manually, or use a cleaner application to do it. By default, you can't see these files using Finder, unless you enable viewing of hidden files.

I though that may be the case, therefore I did both a Time Machine backup and a regular drag and drop backup on two separate hard drives and I will be starting a fresh.

I need to dig into the 'other' folder and see what I can find as I only did the clean install last night, dragged over the photo backup and suddenly I have 13gb worth of 'other' files.