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Using Stack Exchange, reading the news, watching a few YouTubes, browsing journals does not cause this. But when I go off into clickbait and less reputable sites my laptop's fan starts running, memory runs out and about 4 GB of disk space becomes unavailable.

In a week or so (after several restarts), the space becomes available again.

I'm not asking which program to download to recover the space, I'm just curious if this stealth disk squatting is a known phenomenon, what might cause it, and how I might discover myself where that space is and clear it out.

  • macOS 10.11 (yes I know, will address this soon)
  • Chrome browser
  • MacBook Air (Mid 2012) (yes I know, will address this soon too!)

update: I did a quick check with CleanMyMac and while it does find some things, it does not find 4 GB. When I remove 0.5 GB this way or delete files, available disk space actually reduces further rather than increases. Strange!

CleanMyMac screenshot

uhoh
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  • Perhaps the websites are running some CPU, memory, and disk intensive tasks on your computer that can give them economic benefits? – Joy Jin Oct 31 '20 at 05:14
  • @JoyJin that could indeed be, hidden as graphics subprocesses perhaps. But when I exit applications and restart the computer, there are several GB of disk space still unavailable for a week or two, then suddenly it returns. – uhoh Oct 31 '20 at 05:19
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    Can you inspect the total size of ~/library/application support/google/chrome before and after the incident? – Joy Jin Oct 31 '20 at 05:30
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    That is the directory google chrome is suppose to keep local storage, cookies, certain caches, etc. – Joy Jin Oct 31 '20 at 06:40
  • @JoyJin thanks! In 30 years of using Apple computers, to my recollection I don't think that I have never "entered a path" as text into Finder, that's a new one for me. I don't see anything there that's large and simultaneously visible, certainly not multi-GB sized. https://i.stack.imgur.com/0SiYp.png – uhoh Oct 31 '20 at 08:26
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    OK. What about ~/Library/Caches/google/chrome? On my laptop it takes up about 1.1 GB. – Joy Jin Nov 01 '20 at 12:10
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    If that is not the case, then we can try to calculate the size of each folder in the root directory before and after the incident: du -sh /* and then du -sh /<folder that suddenly become larger>/* and etc., until you find the culprit. – Joy Jin Nov 01 '20 at 12:14
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    It is definitely an overkill but it seems like these files are not being put in conventional places. – Joy Jin Nov 01 '20 at 12:15
  • @JoyJin Thanks! That folder has only a few MB total. I'm a compulsive cleaner of temporary files and never (knowingly) store things with my browser. I'll try the methodical route you mention next. This is interesting :-) – uhoh Nov 01 '20 at 13:06
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    Do you use time machine? I just realised that before apfs macOS also make local snapshots. Try du -sh /Volumes/MobileBackups? See this question: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/44203/disk-space-not-freed-up-after-deleting-files-and-emptying-trash for more information. – Joy Jin Nov 05 '20 at 01:42
  • @JoyJin yes I do, but I don't have a backup right after an event like this. Instead I had to do something quick and this is known to work. I free up 2-3 more GB of space by moving some old blocks of data. The available space first gets even smaller for a few minutes, then after restart, pow! the 2-3 newly freed GB AND the 3-4 old GB of free space both become available again. Nonetheless I will take a look as you've mentioned this weekend to see what I find. – uhoh Nov 05 '20 at 13:34

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