7 ms·

It's incredible how many applications abuse disk access. In a similar fashion, Apple Podcasts app decided to download 120GB of podcasts for random reason and n

It's incredible how many applications abuse disk access. In a similar fashion, Apple Podcasts app decided to download 120GB of podcasts for random reason and never deleted them. It even showed up as "System Data" and made me look for external drive solutions.

chuckadams 7mo ago
Someone actually still uses the built-in podcasts app?
- Angostura 7mo ago
  It's absolutely fine, from what I can tell
- mister_mort 7mo ago
  AFAIK the native Podcast app for iPhone is the only way to make PC-phone podcast file syncing work. This stops you downloading the same podcast file twice, once on your PC and once on your phone.
- hidelooktropic 7mo ago
  Not sure what you have against it. Works great for me. No subscription required. And if I do want to pay for ad free shows and support creators it's easy to do so. Use whatever you like but I don't think Podcast app users are rare by any stretch of the imagination.
- dewey 7mo ago
  It probably has more active users than all third party podcast apps on all mobile platforms combined. The power of defaults.
- rafram 7mo ago
  It's generally a good app. People in the tech community like Overcast, but I've always found its UI completely illogical. Apple Podcasts is organized like I'd expect a podcast app to be.
delaminator 7mo ago
My WinSxS folder is 17Gb
torben-friis 7mo ago
The system data issue on macOS is awful. I use my MacBook for a mix of dev work and music production and between docker, music libraries, update caches and the like it’s not weird for me to have to go for a fresh install once every year or two. Once that gets filled up, it’s pretty much impossible to understand where the giant block of memory is.
- John23832 7mo ago
  Seconding. I should not have to hack through /Libary files to regain data on a TB drive because Osx wanted to put 200gbs of crap there in an opaque manner and not give the user ANY direct way to regain their space.
- dotxlem 7mo ago
  I had the same problem and had some luck cleaning things up by enabling "calculate all sizes" in Finder, which will show you the total directory size, and makes it a bit easier to look for where the big stuff is hiding. You'll also want to make sure to look through hidden directories like ~/Library; I found a bunch of Docker-related stuff in there which turned out to be where a lot of my disk space went. You can enable "calculate all sizes" in Finder with Cmd+J. I think it only works in list view however.
  - robin_reala 7mo ago
    I’d recommend GrandPerspective:[1] it’s really good at displaying this sort of thing, has been around for over two decades, and the developer has managed to keep it to <5MB which is perfect when you’re running very low on space. [1] https://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/ https://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/
    - braingravy 7mo ago
      I use GP, would recommend as well; it generates great color codes tree maps of your storage. Once you get used to navigating it that way, you won’t go back.
  - 7mo ago
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
AndroTux 7mo ago
This one drives me nuts. Not just on Mac, also on iPhone/iPad. It's 2026, and 5G is the killer feature advertised everywhere. There's no reason to default to downloading gigabytes of audio files if they could be streamed with no issue whatsoever.
- frereubu 7mo ago
  On 5G, it depends. There are still plenty of people around the world who don't have unlimited data plans.
  - AndroTux 7mo ago
    Then they can enable downloads in the settings. I’m not saying they should remove the feature. I’m saying setting this as a default on a non-budget device is a bad design choice.
- jlokier 7mo ago
  I'm on 5G right now and it just struggled to load the HN front page due to local network congestion. At times of day when it's not congested it reaches 60-90Mbyte/s in the same physical location Spotify just gave up while trying to show me my podcasts. I can't listen to anything not already downloaded right now. Yet at 3am I'll be able to download a 100GB LLM without difficulty onto the same device that can't stream a podcast right now. Unfortunately I don't think 5G is the streaming panacea you have in mind. Maybe one day...
  - voakbasda 7mo ago
    Shared medium will always have congestion. It will never get better. Technology can get faster, but congestion is forever.
- melonpan7 7mo ago
  Only reason I still download from Apple Music to device is for lossless and hi-res lossless, which would otherwise use a lot of cellular data.
coldtrait 7mo ago
This seems to be a recent popular tool to handle this - https://github.com/tw93/Mole https://github.com/tw93/Mole I also prompt warp/gemini cli to identify unnecessary cache and similar data and delete them
dewey 7mo ago
Don't run "du -h ~/Library/Messages" then, I've mentioned that many times before and it's crazy to me to think that Apple is just using up 100GB on my machine, just because I enable iMessage syncing and don't want to delete old conversations. One would think that's a extremely common use case and it will only grow the more years iMessage exists. Just offload them to the cloud, charge me for it if you want but every other free message service that exists has no problem doing that.
- bensyverson 7mo ago
  Agreed, it should work like the iCloud Photos library; cache locally, but pull from the cloud when necessary.
  - mh- 7mo ago
    Even with the way Photos work - which is desirable, I agree - I should be able to specify a limit on how much local disk it uses. I don't know what the formula it uses is, but it's insufficient.
    - bensyverson 7mo ago
      There is a workaround… You can create an APFS partition on your main drive, set it to a fixed size (e.g. 10GB), and then move the location of your Photos library to that drive. Note that if your Photos library is already larger than you want it to be, you may need to make sure it's synced, delete it, and create a new library on the drive. It will then sync with iCloud. But that's a hassle, and I would back up the library before you do this.
- bee_rider 7mo ago
  Offloading to the cloud and charging the user seems like a bigger breach of expectations than the hard drive space.
  - dewey 7mo ago
    If you have a choice there's nothing wrong with it. It's the same way that iCloud Photos already work. You can either disable iCloud and have everything locally in your Photos app or let it dynamically offload to iCloud (If you have enough cloud space). I'd rather pay for cloud space that I'm already using anyway than having it take up my limited space on my laptop that I can't extend.
jacquesm 7mo ago
> Apple Podcasts app decided to download 120GB That's one way to drive sales for higher priced SSDs in Apple products. I'm pretty sure that that sort of move shows up as a real blip on Apple's books.
jvidalv 7mo ago
Suprisingly Claude is amazing at cleaning up your macbook. Tried, works like a charm.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
geooff_ 7mo ago
I had the same problem but with a bad time machine backup. ~300GB of my 512GB disk, just labeled the generic "System Data". I lost a day of work over it because I couldn't do Xcode builds and had to do a deep dive into what was going on.

chuckadams 7mo ago

Someone actually still uses the built-in podcasts app?

Angostura 7mo ago
It's absolutely fine, from what I can tell
mister_mort 7mo ago
AFAIK the native Podcast app for iPhone is the only way to make PC-phone podcast file syncing work. This stops you downloading the same podcast file twice, once on your PC and once on your phone.
hidelooktropic 7mo ago
Not sure what you have against it. Works great for me. No subscription required. And if I do want to pay for ad free shows and support creators it's easy to do so. Use whatever you like but I don't think Podcast app users are rare by any stretch of the imagination.
dewey 7mo ago
It probably has more active users than all third party podcast apps on all mobile platforms combined. The power of defaults.
rafram 7mo ago
It's generally a good app. People in the tech community like Overcast, but I've always found its UI completely illogical. Apple Podcasts is organized like I'd expect a podcast app to be.

delaminator 7mo ago

My WinSxS folder is 17Gb

torben-friis 7mo ago

The system data issue on macOS is awful. I use my MacBook for a mix of dev work and music production and between docker, music libraries, update caches and the like it’s not weird for me to have to go for a fresh install once every year or two. Once that gets filled up, it’s pretty much impossible to understand where the giant block of memory is.

John23832 7mo ago
Seconding. I should not have to hack through /Libary files to regain data on a TB drive because Osx wanted to put 200gbs of crap there in an opaque manner and not give the user ANY direct way to regain their space.
dotxlem 7mo ago
I had the same problem and had some luck cleaning things up by enabling "calculate all sizes" in Finder, which will show you the total directory size, and makes it a bit easier to look for where the big stuff is hiding. You'll also want to make sure to look through hidden directories like ~/Library; I found a bunch of Docker-related stuff in there which turned out to be where a lot of my disk space went. You can enable "calculate all sizes" in Finder with Cmd+J. I think it only works in list view however.
- robin_reala 7mo ago
  I’d recommend GrandPerspective:[1] it’s really good at displaying this sort of thing, has been around for over two decades, and the developer has managed to keep it to <5MB which is perfect when you’re running very low on space. [1] https://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/ https://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/
  - braingravy 7mo ago
    I use GP, would recommend as well; it generates great color codes tree maps of your storage. Once you get used to navigating it that way, you won’t go back.
- 7mo ago

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

AndroTux 7mo ago

This one drives me nuts. Not just on Mac, also on iPhone/iPad. It's 2026, and 5G is the killer feature advertised everywhere. There's no reason to default to downloading gigabytes of audio files if they could be streamed with no issue whatsoever.

frereubu 7mo ago
On 5G, it depends. There are still plenty of people around the world who don't have unlimited data plans.
- AndroTux 7mo ago
  Then they can enable downloads in the settings. I’m not saying they should remove the feature. I’m saying setting this as a default on a non-budget device is a bad design choice.
jlokier 7mo ago
I'm on 5G right now and it just struggled to load the HN front page due to local network congestion. At times of day when it's not congested it reaches 60-90Mbyte/s in the same physical location Spotify just gave up while trying to show me my podcasts. I can't listen to anything not already downloaded right now. Yet at 3am I'll be able to download a 100GB LLM without difficulty onto the same device that can't stream a podcast right now. Unfortunately I don't think 5G is the streaming panacea you have in mind. Maybe one day...
- voakbasda 7mo ago
  Shared medium will always have congestion. It will never get better. Technology can get faster, but congestion is forever.
melonpan7 7mo ago
Only reason I still download from Apple Music to device is for lossless and hi-res lossless, which would otherwise use a lot of cellular data.

coldtrait 7mo ago

This seems to be a recent popular tool to handle this - https://github.com/tw93/Mole https://github.com/tw93/Mole I also prompt warp/gemini cli to identify unnecessary cache and similar data and delete them

dewey 7mo ago

Don't run "du -h ~/Library/Messages" then, I've mentioned that many times before and it's crazy to me to think that Apple is just using up 100GB on my machine, just because I enable iMessage syncing and don't want to delete old conversations. One would think that's a extremely common use case and it will only grow the more years iMessage exists. Just offload them to the cloud, charge me for it if you want but every other free message service that exists has no problem doing that.

bensyverson 7mo ago
Agreed, it should work like the iCloud Photos library; cache locally, but pull from the cloud when necessary.
- mh- 7mo ago
  Even with the way Photos work - which is desirable, I agree - I should be able to specify a limit on how much local disk it uses. I don't know what the formula it uses is, but it's insufficient.
  - bensyverson 7mo ago
    There is a workaround… You can create an APFS partition on your main drive, set it to a fixed size (e.g. 10GB), and then move the location of your Photos library to that drive. Note that if your Photos library is already larger than you want it to be, you may need to make sure it's synced, delete it, and create a new library on the drive. It will then sync with iCloud. But that's a hassle, and I would back up the library before you do this.
bee_rider 7mo ago
Offloading to the cloud and charging the user seems like a bigger breach of expectations than the hard drive space.
- dewey 7mo ago
  If you have a choice there's nothing wrong with it. It's the same way that iCloud Photos already work. You can either disable iCloud and have everything locally in your Photos app or let it dynamically offload to iCloud (If you have enough cloud space). I'd rather pay for cloud space that I'm already using anyway than having it take up my limited space on my laptop that I can't extend.

jacquesm 7mo ago

> Apple Podcasts app decided to download 120GB That's one way to drive sales for higher priced SSDs in Apple products. I'm pretty sure that that sort of move shows up as a real blip on Apple's books.

jvidalv 7mo ago

Suprisingly Claude is amazing at cleaning up your macbook. Tried, works like a charm.

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

geooff_ 7mo ago

I had the same problem but with a bad time machine backup. ~300GB of my 512GB disk, just labeled the generic "System Data". I lost a day of work over it because I couldn't do Xcode builds and had to do a deep dive into what was going on.