Freeing up space on my Mac | Hacker News Reader

Freeing up space on my Mac

darigo.substack.com

6 pointssdsd10 comments

HN posts are always so fancy and impressive, so I decided to create a blog that's the opposite - me doing basic operations on my computer.

I enjoy using my computer, so maybe you'll enjoy reading about it. Or maybe not lol.

Either way, very curious to hear about better ways I could have done this.

Why in the name of God is Boku no Pico in your "recents" section?

I looked up "funny anime" or somesuch, to watch something with my family. Very unpleasant surprise in the opening credits lol

we ended up watching Spy (2015) which also had an unexpected, unpleasant surprise.

Everyone should have listened to me to begin with and watched Godzilla Minus One

I'm sorry I asked. For future reference, maybe avoid /b/ for family-friendly viewing recommendations...

I always liked Disk Inventory X: https://www.derlien.com/

Cool! It seems to basically do the same thing as the ncdu tool that 13chan recommended (but via GUI instead of TUI).

Installed, thanks :)

First things to do with a new mac (I should have written these down) have to do with changing defaults to something useful.

Things like folders being invisible, default "new finder window", and such.

I was chatting about MacOS annoyances ... some fun. In no particular order:

The OS anticipates actions as you drag stuff around over icons and menu items, causing delays as it anticipates lots of things that you will never do.

The "find" box, now shrunken to an icon, seems to work faster, (WITH AN M2 CPU) even without the unwanted and dreaded search for partial search terms as I type them ( kindly make your typos at the end, not the beginning, as all search seems vastly oversensitive to initial typos, rather than guessing the entire word you're trying to type while it goes off into hyperspace) or doing nothing until you've typed the entire word. (applies to browsers as well)

The finder seems to resize columns according to what is least usable. (I thought that I set a default.)

Preview often sizes a window just smaller than the image, so I have to resize the window in order to crop a picture properly.

The "save file" dialog always seems to open in the wrong place, and since Ventura, just grabbing a folder off a finder window is like safe-cracking, so I bookmark every commonly used folder in the sidebar for one-click navigation.

I almost always save files to PDF via the print dialog. If my click on the PDF pulldown, or my shortcut (command-P) fails, I am left with a print job in the queue. In such cases:

lprm - in the terminal, is your friend.

In general, much like iOS, actions seem to take place after delays (OH, I HATE RENAMING FILES). I hate delays and "magic touch required". Even Preview does this. Click on the file name, and if you hit the magic spot, you can rename and tag the file. You can't tag the file after closing the window, because the system (even with an SSD) is using the temp file, so "Operation Cannot Be Completed". So, wait, wait.

One SSD refuses to show up in "Locations" so I bookmark it in the finder sidebar. WTF?

Well, I am sure there are tons of such annoyances.

I currently store everything imaginable in external SSD drives. I haven't moved my home directory off the boot disk. YET.

For some unknown reason, when I go to save a file on SSD, I hear the magnetic drives spinning up, even I told the system not to spin them down. Wait, Wait.

Yes, I know the unix commands to help with the stuff in the article. I used to manage (if "memory" serves me) Sun workstations with 8MB of memory and 105 MB disks. Can that be?

Well, enough airing of grievances for now.

The process in the article reminds me of how the iPhone filled up with "System Data" that I could not possibly remove (I tried everything) and finally backing it up, wiping it and restoring. Sigh.

Have a great 2024 despite the annoyances.

>lprm - in the terminal, is your friend.

I'm curious why this is on the list. According to Google, it cancels print jobs. Is this a common issue on Mac?

I "print" a lot of stuff to PDF, chiefly from the browser.

So, I hit "Print" (Command-P in every app's main menu).

If I don't hit "save to PDF" either via the pdf pulldown, or my own shortcut, "Command-P, Save as PDF...", then the pages go to the default printer instead of to a file. I work kind of fast, so it happens.

the lprm - command removes the job from the print queue. If I don't, then it prints the next time the printer is switched on. Not desired.

This can happen if you save files to PDF via the print command, which I do incessantly. Some apps do have a "save to pdf" menu item, but this works for all apps.

HTH

Oh, that's interesting! I've only ever needed Command-P for webpages, and on Firefox, for me, Command-P saves to PDF by default so I've never had to worry about that.

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