[OtinG]

While testing out various external storage drives on my MacBook Pro 2014, I noticed that my system says Mojave is taking up 115GB of my 256GB internal SSD. That seems way too high. I looked up Big Sur and Apple states, “If upgrading from macOS Sierra or later, macOS Big Sur requires 35.5GB of available storage to upgrade.” But I’m not sure how much it actually take up after installation.

I don’t remember which macOS version was on my MacBook Pro when I bought it in 2014, probably Mavericks, but I know I’ve updated it at least once.

Until recently, I had no trouble keeping at least 100GB of my SSD freed up. If I keep at least 100GB freed up, processing goes a lot faster. It slows down when I get below 100GB. Currently I’m having trouble keeping it at 84GB free, and that is after I moved a bunch of data to a new external SSD drive I bought. I’m not sure when I went from greater than 100GB free to only 84GB, but it was fairly recent. There have been a couple new updates lately, and the last one pretty much toasted Safari. It now takes forever for Safari to even open.

If anyone here is running Mojave, or even a newer version, please check to see how much space it takes up. I guess macOS can get bloated after 6+ years and many updates, but 115GB seems way more than it should take even when bloated.

BTW, I checked the amount by Opening the Apple menu, selecting About This Mac, then clicking the Storage tab in the toolbar to see how much disk space I have available. Finally I held the mouse cursor over the greyed portion and it showed 115GB for the macOS.