
Sierra also offers a few features to help you better manage your storage space.īy design, Sierra’s storage optimization operations are hidden from the user’s view. Other candidate files include special cases like TV shows and movies in your iTunes library that you’ve already watched, foreign language dictionaries and large, non-Latin fonts that have never been used. Once they’re backed up on iCloud, any of these files could technically be a purgeable candidate. User files that are not backed up to iCloud should never be marked as purgeable. These folders probably contain most of your files. Turning on iCloud Desktop and Documents vastly expands the potential pool of files that can be marked purgeable. Two main factors affect whether a file is purgeable: the date it was last opened and whether the file is available in iCloud. If the file can be downloaded from iTunes, Photos, or iCloud on demand, and it hasn’t been opened in a while, there’s a good chance it will get marked as purgeable. What Sort of Files Does Sierra Consider Purgeable? But we do have a general idea of what can get marked as purgeable. You also can’t clear the purgeable space yourself unless you resort to some Terminal hacking. Purgeable data still exists as real, accessible files, but macOS has deemed those files expendable.Īs of now, it’s not possible to see which files, exactly, the OS has marked as purgeable. “Purgeable” describes files that macOS has decided could be deleted, if necessary. This is similar to “deleting” data from a hard drive: data is marked as garbage, but it’s not gone until it’s overwritten. WARNING:Formatting the drive will erase all data on the drive, so you should copy any data you want off the drive prior to formatting.To optimize storage space, the OS analyzes the content of a user’s hard drive and sorts files into two camps: “purgeable” and everything else. If APFS is not available then the drive is in MBR and not GUID Partition Map. NOTE: Make sure that Scheme is set to GUID Partition Map and not Master Boot Record (MBR).

Check step 2 to confirm Disk Utility is Showing All Devices NOTE: If you don’t see Scheme, then make sure that all devices are showing and the non-indented entry is selected.


#PURGEABLE MACOS SIERRA WINDOWS#
If you need to go between macOS and Windows then format your drive ExFAT on macOS

#PURGEABLE MACOS SIERRA MAC OS#
APFS is not compatible with Time Machine on macOS versions High Sierra to Catalina. Time Machine requires the drive to be formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled) for these versions.APFS is only available when Scheme is set to ‘GUID Partition Map’, APFS will not be shown when Scheme is set to Master Boot Record – See Step 6.APFS is not officially supported for macOS versions prior to 10.13 (High Sierra), and will not mount on 10.12 and earlier.It is important to keep the following in mind when formatting to APFS: Not seeing your version of macOS? Click here to see other versions of macOS and different formatting options.Not sure which version you are using? Click here to determine your version of macOS.IMPORTANT: This article applies to the following macOS versions:
