macOS
Shine a spotlight on the solutions to your most irritating Mac problems
Unless there’s a good reason, enable FileVault, particularly on Intel Macs with a T2 chip and Apple silicon models.
How much space is really free?
Q My M1 Mac mini is running short of internal storage. With free space at a premium, the Finder and Disk Utility often differ on what they claim is available. Which should I believe?
by DON PHILLIPS
A If you need to know accurate figures for free or used disk space, trust those provided by Disk Utility, not the Finder, because of the way they obtain them. Select any disk or volume in Disk Utility, and the app gets a fresh estimate from macOS for each of the figures it displays.
The Finder, on the other hand, merely tells you the last figures it was updated with, which could be from 10 or more minutes ago, and there’s no way you can force it to update them with more recent info.