How to reclaim purgeable space on macOS Sequoia

Purgeable space is managed by the OS and usually gets taken care of with a reboot.

There's no real consistent shortcut to reclaiming it manually, though in the Terminal application you can run the purge command which forces disk cache to be flushed and emptied.

% sudo purge

Terminal will prompt for your password, but will not display that as you type it. Just type and press [enter].

Note - Don't use this if you have other apps and documents open.

Purgeable Space is controlled by the Operating System and not the user 

Get detailed information about a disk in Disk Utility on Mac

Usually, when a person asks to reclaim Purgeable Space they often but not always have a System Data takes up too much space issue

Should that be the real underlining issue ?

Reducing System/Volume/Data is a common question. 

1 -  System data taking too much in MacOS Sono… - Apple Community

2 - Time Machine Local Snapshot won't delete - Apple Community

3 - Over 60% storage blocked by System Data - Apple Community

How to free up ‘System Data’ and other storage on your Mac from a fellow colleague  

Suggest getting an External SSD Drive and start moving your Pictures, Videos, Music and any other large files you have control over, OFF the Internal drive and Onto the External

There are  two effective ways to remedy this issue:

1. Quick Fix Actions:

For Apple Silicon computers, use Disk Utility to erase a Mac.

For Apple Intel computers, use Disk Utility to erase an Intel-based Mac, then reinstall macOS.

Always make a Time Machine backup before proceeding.

Migrate only the user account, not the entire system.

Reinstall only the necessary applications from the Apple App Store or directly from the developers.

2 - Generally

When the user discovers this issue, it’s likely because the computer’s internal drive capacity is small, such as 256 GB.

Unfortunately, the user’s storage needs may have increased since the computer was purchased.

To future-proof the computer, consider spending extra money upfront on a larger drive capacity and adding more unified RAM.

Note - On Apple Silicon and newer computers. The SSD Drive and the Unified RAM are Soldered to the Logicboard and can not be upgraded.

@ D. I. Johnson 👍

I'm not totally sure the terminal command will or will not produce the desired effects, clear purgeable space

If I could only find that posing which would go back some time

Have seen another more senior contributor mention that command will >>

• Frees inactive memory and clears the filesystem cache.
• Forces macOS to reclaim RAM being used for cached files.
• Can make free memory appear to increase temporarily.
• May cause the system to slow briefly afterward as the cache rebuilds.

Always a pleasure working " With You " an others of like minded contributors

Likewise, my friend. 👍🏽

Agree, and why I stated that there is no "consistent shortcut to reclaiming (space) manually".

From Terminal's man page for the purge command:

The command process "approximates..." and "does not affect anonymous memory..." blah, blah.

But ya know, it's worth a try. 🙂