Moving folders · How moving folders works
How much space do I get back by moving a folder?
Short answer: Almost all of it — the links left behind are tiny, so you get back roughly the folder's on-disk size, which Storage Studio shows before you move. Your Mac's recent snapshots can hold some of that space for a while before releasing it.
Almost all of it. The links left behind are tiny, so you get back roughly the room the folder takes up on disk — which is the size Storage Studio shows you before the move.
Two things can make the number on your free-space readout lag behind:
- Your Mac's own recent snapshots can keep holding the space of files that were just moved. Storage Studio asks macOS to release it after a successful move, but macOS decides; held space usually returns on its own within about a day.
- Moves report what actually came back, measured, rather than a prediction, so the figure catches up as each item completes.