What is Reddit's opinion of OmniDiskSweeper?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

OmniDiskSweeper is another option for the Mac.

http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnidisksweeper/

SpaceSniffer on Windows is another.

http://www.uderzo.it/main_products/space_sniffer/

One more way on the Mac, if you don't want to install additional programs (and are comfortable in the terminal) is to use the 'du' command. For example:

$ du -ch -d 1 ~ \8.0K /Users/phormality/.adobe 3.4M /Users/phormality/.dropbox 164K /Users/phormality/.fontconfig 4.0K /Users/phormality/.plex 1020K /Users/phormality/.swt 11M /Users/phormality/.Trash 0B /Users/phormality/Applications 15M /Users/phormality/Desktop 96K /Users/phormality/Development 81M /Users/phormality/Documents 5.9G /Users/phormality/Downloads 280M /Users/phormality/Dropbox 8.2G /Users/phormality/Library 1.0M /Users/phormality/Movies 79G /Users/phormality/Music 7.0G /Users/phormality/Pictures 756M /Users/phormality/Public 20K /Users/phormality/Sites 4.7G /Users/phormality/tmp 106G /Users/phormality 106G total

I like OmniDiskSweeper better. It's not as pretty as DaisyDisk, but it has a feature that I can not live without: "Size in OmniDiskSweeper" services. It's really convenient when you're browsing through a random folder and wondering how much spaced is used (including its subdirs).

It's also free!

OmniDiskSweeper: http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnidisksweeper/

Basically you will need to manually go through your files and delete what you don't want. OmniDiskSweeper is a great utility that will help you find out which folders are taking up the most space.

There are many things I deem important which are located in there.

I wouldn't blindly tell someone to delete this whole folder. Get something like OmniDiskSweeper and find where the big stuff is and evaluate those things. There is no point in trashing a lot of that stuff that most users will have issues with if they delete. Not to mention, anyone that blindly deletes this folder probably doesn't know how to fix the problem once they find an issue.

I hope you backed up the data somewhere in case you need something in there.... did you?

To free up disk space you need to find what is causing you to not have space. Some app you have was putting shit in there. I have 2 Macs and one is showing 4GB and the other is about 7.3GB for the /Library. Knowing from the past Garageband installs all it's loops to the /Library/Application Support. The Garageband folder is 2.63GB... that accounts for most of the difference in the folder sizes. So I could delete that 1 folder that I wouldn't miss vs all the other shit which could causes issues down the road or leave my system in a state where it is lacking certain files it counts on to be there. I think they changed it, but when Steam launched for the Mac it was downloading games to one of the Library folders... again... deal with the offending sub-folder, not the root folder.

If you still use whatever app threw all that stuff there in the same way you will have it fill up again, it is only a matter of time.

I hope like hell you I never have to work with you as a sys admin.

Specifically “Other” files include the contents of the System and Library folders (because Spotlight won’t report on them by default), non-media documents such as text files and email archives, plug-ins and extensions, media files that are tucked away inside a package (because Spotlight doesn’t look inside packages), and other file types that are mysterious to Spotlight. Use this little tool to find out what files are taking up your disk space and eliminate those you don't wish to keep: Omni disksweeper. Don't delete swap files, you wanna keep those for reasons I won't get into.

Also check for your backups. Time machine sometimes stores some large backup files on your disk even if you've selected backup to external hard drive. So consider disabling automatic backups and do it manually every week or so, then locate and delete some of the backups you don't want (not all of them). You might actually consider disabling Time Machine all together.

Finally, clear your Mail Application. You'll be surprised to know that tiny attachments can account for a few GB if accumulated over the years!

Good luck!

I use CCleaner (Free) for Mac to clean caches from browsers and apps. From what I understand, that should take care of the "Other" storage, as caches usually take a lot of space. I try to run CCleaner every month or so just to keep things tidy.

OmniDiskSweeper is a free program to identify large files on your computer, from there you can decide if you want to trash it or move it off your hard drive. There are lots of free places to backup big files to cloud. You can get PogoPlug 30GB cloud storage for free with a CNet membership (it's a new deal so that's why I've linked it, it might expire), Dropbox offers a good amount of space and increases if it you do some promos, Google Drive gives you 15 GB, etc etc I'm sure there are a lot of other solid online backup offers.

For mac, I highly recommend omnidisksweeper. It will organize you files showing the largest to the smallest in each folder so you can find what is taking up unnecessary hd space.

I would download OmniDiskSweeper to figure out which one is correct and then report back to us. That's an interesting discrepancy and I'd be interested in finding the answer myself.