Mac OS Sierra and High Sierra occupies 95GB on my MacBook Pro 2017 128GB Edition. How to Clean?

Question

I am an iOS developer. I am using a 2017 MacBook Pro with 128GB disk space to do my job (company laptop ). But recently, I found I don't have enough space to build my app, switch Git branches. It notices me the disk space does not have enough to do so.

I have used Disk Docter Pro to clean some caches, Developer files. But the OS disk size is still over 95 GB.

How could it happen? And, how to resolve this issue?

Answer 1

The window you showed gives only a basic view of the disk usage. For more thorough inspection, use the following command:

du -sh <folder>/*

Note 1: Use sudo for folders where your user does not have sufficient permissions, e.g.

$ sudo du -sh /*
 41G    /Applications
 17G    /Library
  0B    /Network
7,1G    /System
1,2T    /Users

Note 2: Add <folder>/.* to include hidden files, e.g.

$ du -sh ~/* ~/.*
592M    /Users/Mirek/Applications
8,6G    /Users/Mirek/Desktop
 14G    /Users/Mirek/Documents
 19G    /Users/Mirek/Downloads
 32K    /Users/Mirek/.DS_Store
  0B    /Users/Mirek/.TemporaryItems
687G    /Users/Mirek/.Trash

Or you can use a GUI application like DaisyDisk.

Answer 2

I found where is space go. In the XCode, at the early day when I set up the development environment. I selected and download a lot of iOS Simulator devices. And, these files are not shown as a normal file. They belong to OS system.

And, the more test device I have plugged on my MacBook Pro, the more space will be taken.

For a normal 512GB or even 256GB BMP, it is not an issue. But for my 128GB MBP, it is a disaster.