I've encountered a problem on my brand new MacBook, but haven't been able to find a solution after working on it for most of today. In a nutshell: When I go to 'About This Mac Storage' the System files were taking up a whopping 90+ GB of my hard drive. Here is a screen shot: I also noticed that, unlike on my wife's MacBook Pro, I had no individual listing for iTunes. I could reach the iTunes folder through Documents on the left side, but the contents of the folder were grayed out.

As an experiment, I copied then deleted my entire iTunes Library from within iTunes. After I did that, my Storage report looked like this: Now the System files are down around 8 GB. (The Documents content jumped up dramatically because I copied my iTunes Library to the Desktop.) Unfortunately, I haven't found a way to establish the separate entry for iTunes in this window. When I move things back into iTunes, they count again toward the System storage amount. And I still don't have a separate iTunes entry. I would like to be a huge fan of Optimized Storage, but this set-up of counting iTunes media as 'system files' seems problematic. And I have no idea why it reports storage content accurately on my wife's Mac but not mine.

Unfortunately Apple Support was not very helpful when I contacted them this afternoon. The agent suggested reinstalling macOS Sierra, which I did, but it didn't solve the problem. Some help would be appreciated, Apple! There are at least two previous posts regarding the same 'issue' (if in fact it is one!), but I'm not sure anyone has got to the bottom of it yet. From my own experience I've found out that 'iTunes' (yes, I seem to have that showing in the left side) only reports size for Apps and Podcasts - my Music which is nearly 70Gb looks as though it's reported under 'System' (as you have found) which is currently at 83Gb - can't confirm because as you state it's greyed out, but all the other items on the left are far less in size so 'System' seems the only place the machine has found to report my music content. Furthermore, if I use Finder and add my actual Music size (70Gb) to Macintosh HD System and Library (8Gb + 5Gb) it gives 83Gb (what the greyed out 'System' is reporting). So I've basically given up trying to understand why it's reporting in the way it is - the concern previously was of a bloated System file section, but that doesn't seem to be the case (and Finder proves that), so may be it will all get sorted in a future update!

I don't think this will solve your iTunes issue, but I've had a similar issue on two Mac machines, both from the same source: Adobe cache files. On my newer Sierra Macbook the 'System' storage was reporting as 186Gb on my 250Gb SSD.

Now that I've fixed it 'System' is less than 20 Gb. OmniDiskSweeper is a great tool for this, although there are other ways to fix it.

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(Be sure you get Version 1.9 or later. The first time I tried, I went to the wrong source and got an earlier version, which didn't work on Sierra.) Look at the following path: Users'YourUserName'LibraryApplication SupportAdobeCommonMedia Cache Files. Delete everything in this folder. In my case, this folder contained full copies of every video that had ever been on the machine. Plus, if I had renamed the video, say from 'Beach1' to 'Beach2', it had full copies with both names. It has additional smaller files for each video, and it may be caching image files as well, although I didn't look at every file. This is especially weird since I copy newly shot videos from the camera card to the laptop in the field (so I can look at them quickly with Flip Player.) I do not ever edit video on this machine, or open video with any Adobe editing product.

I do have Bridge, which makes thumbnails of the videos if I happen to use it to look at that folder. I had the same problem a year or two ago on an earlier machine, fixed it, and I thought Adobe had fixed the bug.

But apparently not. You have to take into account all the other files on your Mac, not just iTunes. For example the text messages on my iPhone determine the size of the backup my iPhone does on the cloud. You need to look into how many notes you have and how many text you sent on the macbook. ITunes isn't the only thing taking up space in the system storage tab. It would also be easier for us to help if you submitted a screenshot of the actual DocumentsiTunes folder so we can see the size of the folder.

That will give us all the info we need to determine the issue. My library is taking up space on my MacBook Air mainly because I use Apple Music and the library takes up space if I use it on my MacBook. Some files are stored on the mac. When I went to my iTunes Music folder in Finder I found what was taking up all the space. It was a movie I purchased on my MacBook Air. One movie was taking up 7GB of data. Go into iTunes and find the movie then select remove download and you can see in the iTunes folder in finder where the folder was removed and the space is now back when I go to System Information.

I can delete it and still watch it on all my devices because of the purchase history option. Now what is taking up all the space is a folder titled Album Artwork.

My iTunes Library on my iMac is 4,185 albums, 176 days, 435.37GB so I'd say I'm doing great for having that available on my MacBook Air anytime I want and the System Storage is only now 35.1GB. Do some digging around in Finder and I'm sure you will find the file(s) taking up all your space. Till then submit the screenshot with more info on the breakdown of the files within iTunes and I'll be able to tell you where to look next.

There are a lot of folders you will need to look into if iTunes is not the issue. For instance you will have to go into your Caches folder and see what is in there. There is a lot that can be done, but I don't want to list them all here and misdirect you when you probably don't need to go into these folders.

There are at least two previous posts regarding the same 'issue' (if in fact it is one!), but I'm not sure anyone has got to the bottom of it yet. From my own experience I've found out that 'iTunes' (yes, I seem to have that showing in the left side) only reports size for Apps and Podcasts - my Music which is nearly 70Gb looks as though it's reported under 'System' (as you have found) which is currently at 83Gb - can't confirm because as you state it's greyed out, but all the other items on the left are far less in size so 'System' seems the only place the machine has found to report my music content.

Furthermore, if I use Finder and add my actual Music size (70Gb) to Macintosh HD System and Library (8Gb + 5Gb) it gives 83Gb (what the greyed out 'System' is reporting). So I've basically given up trying to understand why it's reporting in the way it is - the concern previously was of a bloated System file section, but that doesn't seem to be the case (and Finder proves that), so may be it will all get sorted in a future update! I don't think this will solve your iTunes issue, but I've had a similar issue on two Mac machines, both from the same source: Adobe cache files. On my newer Sierra Macbook the 'System' storage was reporting as 186Gb on my 250Gb SSD.

Now that I've fixed it 'System' is less than 20 Gb. OmniDiskSweeper is a great tool for this, although there are other ways to fix it.

(Be sure you get Version 1.9 or later. The first time I tried, I went to the wrong source and got an earlier version, which didn't work on Sierra.) Look at the following path: Users'YourUserName'LibraryApplication SupportAdobeCommonMedia Cache Files. Delete everything in this folder. In my case, this folder contained full copies of every video that had ever been on the machine. Plus, if I had renamed the video, say from 'Beach1' to 'Beach2', it had full copies with both names. It has additional smaller files for each video, and it may be caching image files as well, although I didn't look at every file.

This is especially weird since I copy newly shot videos from the camera card to the laptop in the field (so I can look at them quickly with Flip Player.) I do not ever edit video on this machine, or open video with any Adobe editing product. I do have Bridge, which makes thumbnails of the videos if I happen to use it to look at that folder. I had the same problem a year or two ago on an earlier machine, fixed it, and I thought Adobe had fixed the bug. But apparently not. Apple Footer.

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