Tuhi & Free Up Space

Tuhi — one tap, hands-off

The fastest way to reclaim room is Run Tuhi on the Home screen. One tap and Storage Studio:

Clears caches and rarely-used files that are safe to remove.
Reclaims old local backups that are pinning deleted blocks.
Keeps your cloud files online-only so they don't take up local space.

It runs on its own, with live progress, and stops when it's done. Tuhi is built to be safe and reversible — it only touches things it knows are safe, and nothing it does is destructive to your own files.

If you'd rather see and approve every step, open the Free Up Space wizard below — same engine, but preview-first and fully under your control.

The Free Up Space wizard

Free Up Space is a three-step recovery flow. Every step previews what will happen before a single byte moves.

Step 1 — Cache cleanup

Scans the well-known cache locations on macOS:

Xcode DerivedData and ModuleCache
Homebrew Cellar/Caches
npm, pip, cargo, yarn caches
Browser disk caches (Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Brave, Edge)
Docker layer cache and Podman build cache

You see a checklist with size estimates. Uncheck anything you'd rather keep, then confirm. The deletion is staged so a crash mid-step doesn't half-delete a directory.

Step 2 — Oversize-file relocation

Finds files above your configured size floor (default 1 GB) in common workspaces. For each one you can:

Move to your fast drive (preserves filename and relative path)
Relocate (move + shortcut)
Skip

Step 2 obeys your pair boundaries. It never touches files outside an active pair.

Step 3 — Cloud eviction (optional)

If you have iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Google Drive, or OneDrive installed, Step 3 can move their cached local copies back to "online only" so the local space comes back. The files always stay in the cloud — this is never a delete — and you opt in per-provider.

For iCloud Drive the eviction happens in one step. For Google Drive, Dropbox and OneDrive, macOS 14 and later no longer lets apps free those files directly, so Storage Studio reveals them in Finder and points you to the provider's own Remove Download — the same online-only result, done the way macOS requires.

Cancel any time

Each step's confirm button is the only thing that actually causes filesystem writes. You can cancel before that button without any side effects.

Recovery guidance

After a Free Up Space run that can't significantly reduce internal usage, Storage Studio surfaces a Want more space? panel with context-specific chips:

Open Apps window — when your applications are taking up a lot of room.
Open Data Parking — when your Documents folder is large, to relocate

big subfolders to your fast drive.

Open iCloud settings — for the iCloud-synced subset of

Documents (macOS 14 and later no longer lets apps free these up automatically, so the setting has to be flipped by hand).

Manage snapshots — when there are at least five macOS local

snapshots pinning deleted space. Opens the Local Snapshots manager where you can see which snapshots are already on Time Machine and reclaim the space with one click.

Why deleting files doesn't always give the space back

This is the most confusing thing about storage on a Mac, and it isn't anything you've done wrong.

macOS quietly keeps recent local snapshots of your drive so it always has a clean point in time to back up from. Delete a file a snapshot still refers to and the file goes away — but the space it used stays taken, held for the snapshot rather than for you. So you can delete gigabytes, watch free space not move at all, delete more, and still see nothing. The space is genuinely spoken for, just not by anything you can see.

It comes back on its own as the snapshots age out, usually within a day, or you can release it now in the Local Snapshots manager.

Storage Studio keeps the three cases apart and tells you which one you're looking at: space in use by files that are really there, space held for now by snapshots of files you already deleted, and space your Mac has just released on its own. Held space is never treated as an emergency, because it isn't one — it's the explanation for why deleting more didn't help.

Emergency space

Open it from the More menu ••• → Emergency Space, from the small red alert badge beside the notification bell on the Home screen, from the button on a low-space notification, or from the banner that appears on the Home screen when your built-in drive is nearly full — several ways in, because a screen you can't find at the moment you need it is no use at all. It's never behind a licence prompt.

The small red badge beside the bell appears only once your built-in drive is at least 95% full, measured as a share of the drive's size rather than a fixed number of gigabytes — 25 GB free is comfortable on a 2 TB Mac and nearly fatal on a 256 GB one. A warning that's permanently on screen is furniture, not a warning.

It's an analysis with actions attached, rather than one big button that acts first and explains afterwards.

You say how much room you need. Storage Studio picks the smallest,

safest set of actions that reaches it and stops.

Safest first, not biggest first — space that comes back without

deleting anything, then things moved to your fast drive and still fully available, then files an app rebuilds by itself, and only then anything deliberate.

Disposable things come before your own files. Clearing rebuildable

data — caches, and temporary files an app abandoned — is offered ahead of anything that relocates work of yours, because the two don't cost you the same. On a full disk the only suggestions used to be to move your own folders.

**It never offers to move the folder your browser keeps you signed in

with.** That folder is large and mostly cache, which makes it look appealing — but moving it wholesale takes your cookies, sign-ins, history and open sessions with it. Storage Studio recognises those folders by the kind of thing inside them rather than by which browser made them, so it covers browsers that don't exist yet.

A folder that's already been relocated is never relocated again.

What's left behind after a move is a set of links; moving those a second time would copy the links over the real files. The check is deliberately one-sided — any real content still present and the move proceeds as normal.

Nothing destructive is ever ticked for you. Reversible options may

arrive selected; anything that removes data never does, however tight things look — and removals still go to the Recycle Vault, so they stay recoverable.

Options that would reclaim nothing aren't listed, and Storage

Studio never empties your Trash for you: that one is permanent, so it stays your decision. It tells you how much is in there and lets you open it.

It measures afterwards and says so if the result fell short of the

prediction, instead of claiming success either way.

Temporary files — the part nobody can see

Your Mac sets aside two areas that are, by its own definition, disposable: a temporary area, cleared when you restart, and a cache area, which your Mac empties by itself when the disk gets tight. Apps write to both knowing the contents can go at any moment.

Storage Studio used to measure neither. An app that left large amounts behind in either place was therefore invisible: the disk filled up, and the answer came back as space that couldn't be accounted for. Both are now measured, and what's there is attributed to the app that put it there.

Grouped, so it's a decision rather than a dare. An app can leave

hundreds or thousands of similarly-named folders behind. They're gathered into one row per app: how much it holds altogether, how many folders that is, how old the oldest is, and whether more were made today.

Named from what's really on your Mac. The name comes off the

folders themselves, and Storage Studio then asks your Mac whether an app of that name is installed. If nothing answers to it, it shows the name as found rather than inventing an owner.

Being in a disposable area only gets a folder considered. Those

areas also hold things apps are using this second, so every folder is checked on its own first: nothing may have it open, nothing may be talking to it, nothing in it may have been touched recently, and a recoverable copy has to be possible. A check that can't be completed counts as a no, and the folder is left alone.

A banner names the cause. When one app accounts for a large share

of what's there, the screen says so at the top.

One limit worth knowing: clearing is offered only when a recoverable copy can be kept, and that copy lives on your fast drive. With the drive unplugged these rows are explained but not offered — a "clear" that only moved things elsewhere on the same full disk wouldn't free anything.

Stopping a clear-up, and seeing what it removed

Stop is always available while it runs, and it's safe by design.

It finishes the folder already in progress and then halts, so nothing is left half-removed. That means it isn't instantaneous — there's a short gap, and the screen says what it's doing during it rather than leaving you wondering whether the button worked.

It tells you where it got to — how much was cleared and how much

is left, both counted rather than estimated.

Carry on picks up from there, not from the beginning. Folders

already removed aren't done again.

You can see exactly what it removes, before, during and after.

Each option opens to the full list of folders it will remove; while it runs, the folder being removed is named; afterwards you get the list of what was removed and, on a stopped run, a separate list of what wasn't touched.

Everything removed stays recoverable in the

Recycle Vault, and a whole clear-up counts as one entry — so putting it back is one action, however many folders it removed.

**Where those recoverable copies sit decides whether you gain

anything. The Recycle Vault keeps removed files on your external fast drive**, not on your Mac — which is exactly why a clear-up frees space: the folders leave your built-in drive and the recoverable copy lands somewhere else. Your Mac keeps only a small list of what's recoverable, so the window can still tell you what's there when the drive is unplugged. That's also why clearing is offered only while the drive is connected.

An interrupted clear-up is sorted out at the next launch. If your

Mac shuts down mid-removal, anything whose copy completed is added to the Recycle Vault so you can find it, and anything whose copy didn't finish is undone. Nothing is ever reported as removed while it's still on your disk.

Review before anything moves

Choosing Free up space doesn't start anything. It opens a review step first, headed "Nothing has happened yet."

Everything you ticked is opened up one level, with the real measured size of what's inside, so you can see what you're agreeing to before a file is touched. You're also told what you'd gain in the terms that matter — roughly how much this frees, and what your free space would be afterwards compared with now.

What moving actually does

The review step spells this out, because it's the thing people most often assume wrongly:

Your original folder keeps working. Storage Studio leaves a link

where it was, so anything that opens those files still finds them in the same place. The folder itself isn't replaced by a single shortcut — the folder stays and the files inside it become links — which is why Finder, Spotlight, your apps and anything that walks through your folders carry on as normal.

Every move is recorded, and appears in What's Using Space with a

one-click Move back.

It's reversible for as long as the drive is connected. This is the

honest version: the files themselves now live on your fast drive. They're reachable while it's plugged in, and they aren't while it isn't. Nothing is duplicated and nothing is in two places — the space came back precisely because the data went somewhere else.

While it runs — and what actually happened

The review sheet doesn't vanish when you confirm. It becomes the progress view, and then the report.

The figures are measured, not predicted. It reports space genuinely

returned on your disk, not the amount it hoped for. Copying finishes before space comes back, so the number catches up as each item completes — and it says so, so a lagging figure doesn't read as a failure.

The time remaining is honest. You get how far along an item is and

roughly how long is left, phrased the way a person would say it: "a few seconds", "12 minutes", "1h 20m". When it genuinely can't estimate yet it says working out how long that will take, rather than inventing a number it would have to walk back.

You can close it. Moving files is a background job and carries on

without the window. Reopening Emergency Space gives you a Show progress button to return to it.

A part-finished move can be repaired. If a move gets most of the way

but leaves some files behind, that row offers Put the link back — one click to finish the rest. Nothing was lost in the meantime, and if a repair genuinely isn't possible it tells you so instead of retrying pointlessly.

When an app is holding a folder open

A folder can't be moved safely while an app is actively writing to it. So instead of failing with a puzzling error, Storage Studio offers Move when closed and shows you exactly what's in the way — "Safari is still using this folder", or "3 apps are still using this folder".

Ask it to quit sends the app the same polite request as choosing

Quit from its menu, so it can save and close normally — and Storage Studio then confirms it really exited rather than assuming it did.

Check again re-checks after you've dealt with an app yourself. If an

app is sitting on an unsaved-changes dialog, the sheet tells you that rather than wrestling with it.

An app Storage Studio isn't allowed to quit is named plainly, with a

request that you quit it yourself.

Force quit is deliberately awkward to reach: it appears only after a

polite quit has been refused, and sits behind its own confirmation explaining the risk — some apps write to their data continuously, and ending one mid-write can damage it.

Your files stay exactly where they are until you choose something. Afterwards, Storage Studio offers to reopen the apps it closed on your behalf.