Reclaiming disk space
What takes space on your Mac, what can go, and what can't be shrunk.
On this page 3 sections
What takes space#
Everything is in ~/Library/Application Support/MSL:
| File | What | Size |
|---|---|---|
rootfs.img (Alpine), and rootfs-<distro>.img for the rest — rootfs-debian.img, rootfs-rocky.img and so on | Each distro's disk. | Whatever Linux has written. |
vm-<instance>.state | A hibernated session. | About the instance's memory. |
vm-<instance>-<snapshot>.state | A snapshot. | About the instance's memory. |
<disk>.pre-repair | A backup from a disk repair. | Grows as the repaired disk changes. |
What you can do#
- Discard repair backups you no longer need, on the Maintenance card.
- Remove instances you don't use — that deletes their hibernated sessions and snapshots. See Removing an instance.
- Delete a distro's disk image, with every instance of that distro stopped. The space comes back immediately; the next start downloads the distro fresh.