Mac Disc Space Almost Full Adobe Premiere Bloat

There's nothing quite like being in the middle of an important export or a complicated render and having OS X tell you that your startup disk is almost full. It happens to the best of us. After experiencing this situation a few times, most of us know the classic locations to check to free up space:

1. Mac Disc Space Almost Full Adobe Premiere Bloated 2
2. Mac Disc Space Almost Full Adobe Premiere Bloated

• Trash
• Adobe cache files [1]
• Downloads
• Poke around ~/Library/Application Support
• iTunes iOS backups

My next move is to use one of my favorite applications, Daisy Disk to give me a simple overview of what is using up the space. This trick and using other apps like it [2] are all it's ever taken for me in the past to find the culprit taking up all the space. Recently, however, I was stumped as to why a Mac Pro I manage at work was slowly filling up all of its disk space.

This particular Mac had a 250 GB SSD installed as the boot drive. Multiple editors used it each week with Premiere Pro CC 2014 using Active Directory managed accounts and linking to projects and media on our fibre SAN. The immediate culprit of course seemed to be growing Adobe cache files. It usually is. So, I logged in as admin and hit CMD+OPT+i in the Finder and then clicked on each user's home folder to see who had piled up too many cache files. To my surprise all the home folders added up to only about 45 GB. Disk Utility and About This Mac > Storage both reported the drive as having 140 GB out of 250 GB in use. A previous time this happened the drive had filled all the way up.

If the path is too long to read, place the pointer over the path, and the full path appears in a tool tip. Choose Edit Preferences Scratch Disks / Adobe Premiere Elements 13 Preferences Scratch Disks. For each scratch disk type, specify a disk location for Premiere. Adobe Premiere Elements, Adobe Photoshop Windows, Photoshop Elements, Adobe Photoshop 6, Adobe Photoshop Cs4, Adobe Systems Software for Mac, Adobe Creative Suite Mac, Adobe Mac Systems Utility, Tool & Driver Software, PC Laptops & Netbooks 12 GB RAM, Photoshop Cs6. If your Mac's startup disk is full and you get a warning message from your Mac system, then this is a serious indication that you have to make space on your Mac startup disk. The solution is to free up disk space. To make more space on your startup disk you have several options.

I have to admit, this threw me for a loop. Running Daisy Disk on the boot drive yielded the same result: it knew the drive was full, but reported all folders as only totalling a fraction of the ‘used' space the system reported.

If you're familiar with Unix systems you'll know that the four folders on the root of every Macintosh HD [3] are not the whole picture. I used the du command in Terminal to list out the sizes for the hidden folders like /tmp, /bin, /usr, /var, etc. It still didn't add up.

After calling out for help on Twitter, the guys at Daisy Disk jumped in and saved the day. The key to the problem was the multiple user accounts. [4] Because I was able to read the contents of each user's home folder in the Finder while logged in as admin I assumed Finder was reporting the whole size of the folder. However, since only the user [5] has read/write access to the folders inside their home folder, Finder wasn't actually able to count those, and neither was Daisy Disk. The system could see the overall disk usage and so it was reporting it correctly but I had assumed incorrectly that Finder, Daisy Disk, and du were able to see through the folders. Inside these folders I couldn't see our usual suspects, the Adobe cache files, growing.

The Trick

The obvious way to fix this would be to log in as each editor and clear out each cache folder. As a responsible system admin while I can reset a password, I do not know each user's password. And I did not want to deal with explaining to each editor why they now needed to reset their password.

I could have gone fancy in the terminal using sudo du and sudo rm to go about finding and cleaning the larger directories. But in my mind a task like this calls for a GUI and luckily if you have the non Mac App Store version of Daisy Disk [6] there is an option to 'Scan as Admin' which essentially runs as the super user and will accurately count and report the full contents of each user's home folder.

Problem solved.

Disclaimer: While I sing the praises of Daisy Disk in this piece I had no interaction with them other than the tweet mentioned and they have not sponsored me or this post in any way.

1. ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/Media Cache
   ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/Media Cache Files
   ~/Documents/Adobe/[version number]/Adobe Premiere Pro Preview Files ↩

2. OmniDiskSweeper, Grand Perspective and Disk Inventory X are some other options. ↩

3. Applications, Library, System, Users ↩

4. If you run a machine without Active Directory accounts or multiple user accounts you likely won't hit this issue. ↩

5. And, the super user (root) ↩

6. Bought it on the Mac App Store like me? Just download it from their site and it will recognize the purchased MAS version and act as if it were purchased. Absolutely cool. ↩

Optimized Storage helps you save storage space space by storing your content in iCloud and making it available on demand:

• When storage space is needed, files, photos, movies, email attachments, and other files that you seldom use are stored in iCloud automatically.
• Each file stays right where you last saved it, and downloads when you open it.
• Files that you've used recently remain on your Mac, along with optimized versions of your photos.

If you haven't yet upgraded to macOS Sierra or later, learn about other ways to free up storage space.

Find out how much storage is available on your Mac

Choose Apple menu  > About This Mac, then click Storage. Each segment of the bar is an estimate of the storage space used by a category of files. Move your pointer over each segment for more detail.

Click the Manage button to open the Storage Management window, pictured below.

Manage storage on your Mac

The Storage Management window offers recommendations for optimizing your storage. If some recommendations are already turned on, you will see fewer recommendations.

Store in iCloud

Click the Store in iCloud button, then choose from these options:

• Desktop and Documents. Store all files from these two locations in iCloud Drive. When storage space is needed, only the files you recently opened are kept on your Mac, so that you can easily work offline. Files stored only in iCloud show a download icon , which you can double-click to download the original file. Learn more about this feature.
  
• Photos. Store all original, full-resolution photos and videos in iCloud Photos. When storage space is needed, only space-saving (optimized) versions of photos are kept on your Mac. To download the original photo or video, just open it.
  
• Messages. Store all messages and attachments in iCloud. When storage space is needed, only the messages and attachments you recently opened are kept on your Mac. Learn more about Messages in iCloud.

Storing files in iCloud uses the storage space in your iCloud storage plan. If you reach or exceed your iCloud storage limit, you can either buy more iCloud storage or make more iCloud storage available. iCloud storage starts at 50GB for $0.99 (USD) a month, and you can purchase additional storage directly from your Apple device. Learn more about prices in your region.

Optimize Storage

Click the Optimize button to save space by automatically removing watched movies and TV shows. When storage space is needed, movies or TV shows that you purchased from Apple and already watched are removed from your Mac. Click the download icon next to a movie or TV show to download it again.

Your Mac will also save space by keeping only recent email attachments on this Mac when storage space is needed. You can manually download any attachments at any time by opening the email or attachment, or saving the attachment to your Mac.

Optimizing storage for movies, TV shows, and email attachments doesn't require iCloud storage space.

Empty Trash Automatically

Empty Trash Automatically permanently deletes files that have been in the Trash for more than 30 days.

Reduce Clutter

Mac Disc Space Almost Full Adobe Premiere Bloated 2

Reduce Clutter helps you identify large files and files you might no longer need. Click the Review Files button, then choose any of the file categories in the sidebar, such as Applications, Documents, Music Creation, or Trash.

You can delete the files in some categories directly from this window. Other categories show the total storage space used by the files in each app. You can then open the app and decide whether to delete files from within it.

Learn how to redownload apps, music, movies, TV shows, and books.

Where to find the settings for each feature

The button for each recommendation in the Storage Management window affects one or more settings in other apps. You can also control those settings directly within each app.

• If you're using macOS Catalina or later, choose Apple menu  > System Preferences, click Apple ID, then select iCloud in the sidebar: Store in iCloud turns on the Optimize Mac Storage setting on the right. To turn off iCloud Drive entirely, deselect iCloud Drive.
• If you're using macOS Mojave or earlier, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click iCloud, then click Options next to iCloud Drive. Store in iCloud turns on the Desktop & Documents Folders and Optimize Mac Storage settings.
• In Photos, choose Photos > Preferences, then click iCloud. Store in iCloud selects iCloud Photos and Optimize Mac Storage.
• In Messages, choose Messages > Preferences, then click iMessage. Store in iCloud selects Enable Messages in iCloud.

• If you're using macOS Catalina or later, open the Apple TV app, choose TV > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Files. Optimize Storage selects 'Automatically delete watched movies and TV shows.'
• In you're using macOS Mojave or earlier, open iTunes, choose iTunes > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Advanced. Optimize Storage selects 'Automatically delete watched movies and TV shows.'
• In Mail, choose Mail > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Accounts. In the Account Information section on the right, Optimize Storage sets the Download Attachments menu to either Recent or None.

Empty Trash Automatically: From the Finder, choose Finder > Preferences, then click Advanced. Empty Trash Automatically selects 'Remove items from the Trash after 30 days.'

Mac Disc Space Almost Full Adobe Premiere Bloated

Other ways that macOS helps automatically save space

With macOS Sierra or later, your Mac automatically takes these additional steps to save storage space:

• Detects duplicate downloads in Safari, keeping only the most recent version of the download
• Reminds you to delete used app installers
• Removes old fonts, languages, and dictionaries that aren't being used
• Clears caches, logs, and other unnecessary data when storage space is needed

How to free up storage space manually

Even without using the Optimized Storage features described in this article, you can take other steps to make more storage space available:

• Music, movies, and other media can use a lot of storage space. Learn how to delete music, movies, and TV shows from your device.
• Delete other files that you no longer need by moving them to the Trash, then emptying the Trash. The Downloads folder is good place to look for files that you might no longer need.
• Move files to an external storage device.
• Compress files.
• Delete unneeded email: In the Mail app, choose Mailbox > Erase Junk Mail. If you no longer need the email in your Trash mailbox, choose Mailbox > Erase Deleted Items.

Learn more

• The Storage pane of About This Mac is the best way to determine the amount of storage space available on your Mac. Disk Utility and other apps might show storage categories such as Not Mounted, VM, Recovery, Other Volumes, Free, or Purgeable. Don't rely on these categories to understand how to free up storage space or how much storage space is available for your data.
• When you duplicate a file on an APFS-formatted volume, that file doesn't use additional storage space on the volume. Deleting a duplicate file frees up only the space required by any data you might have added to the duplicate. If you no longer need any copies of the file, you can recover all of the storage space by deleting both the duplicate and the original file.
• If you're using a pro app and Optimize Mac Storage, learn how to make sure that your projects are always on your Mac and able to access their files.