Alpha — everything since 4.14.0, consolidated.
WHERE YOUR SPACE ACTUALLY WENT. Storage Studio now measures the areas macOS sets aside for temporary files, which it never used to look at. That matters more than it sounds: an app can quietly leave a very large share of your disk there — on the Mac this was built for, one had accumulated more than a third of the drive in leftover folders over several weeks, and nothing on the machine could see it. Those areas are now measured, attributed to the app responsible, and offered for clearing.
Storage Inspector opens on a real, ranked breakdown of what is using your disk, drillable to any depth, alongside what changed since last time and how old the data your backups are holding is. It says plainly when part of the disk could not be read, rather than presenting a partial total as complete.
EMERGENCY SPACE. When the disk is nearly full, this shows what is using it and offers the safest options first — clearing files your apps rebuild by themselves, before it ever suggests moving anything of yours. Tell it how much room you want and it picks the smallest set that gets you there. Nothing happens until you choose, and nothing that removes data is ever ticked for you.
You can open a folder to see inside before agreeing to anything. A clear-up can be stopped at any point: it finishes the item it is on, tells you what was done and what is left, and carries on later rather than starting over. You can see exactly which folders were removed, and everything cleared stays recoverable.
It also explains what most tools leave out — space your Mac is holding in its own automatic backups, which is why deleting files sometimes gives nothing back — and offers to release it.
WHAT IT WILL NOT TOUCH. Folders holding an app's settings, sign-ins or history are never offered; only the parts an app rebuilds by itself. Browser profiles are refused outright. Your Trash is measured and reported but never emptied for you.
DATA PARKING. Folder sizes are real sizes now, measured from the contents rather than the folder's own record, with sorting by size, name or date. Moves show live progress with an honest estimate, leave a link behind so your apps keep working, and can be undone while the drive is connected.
THE RECYCLE VAULT. It now says where it is — your removed files live on your external drive; this Mac keeps only the list, plus anything still waiting for the drive to be reconnected. Permanently deleting a large selection no longer freezes the window, and shows how far along it is.
QUIT AND RESTART REALLY DO STOP EVERYTHING, including background helpers that used to keep running after the app had closed, and only one copy of Storage Studio can run at a time.
PERMISSIONS. Full Disk Access is now detected correctly. Moving a folder that lives under a protected location used to leave Storage Studio believing it still had permission after macOS had withdrawn it, so problems appeared as unexplained read failures instead of a clear prompt. It now notices when your Mac stops honouring a permission you previously granted, and offers to sort it out at the moment something is refused rather than only on first launch.
FIXED. A rare case where relocating an already-relocated folder could overwrite it. An all-time "space reclaimed" figure that counted some space more than once and could never go down; it is now measured from what is actually on your drive and falls when you move something back. Two buttons that named an action they did not perform. And the install window is branded again.