[gloosx]

My Macbook needs a restart periodically. Somehow my quite limited disk space (500GB) is getting lower and lower and lower to the point where spotlight will stop working. After restart, I magically get 50GB of disk space back, I'm not sure what is wrong with it and I never took the time to investigate, but I guess it's caches and temp files of all kinds. I also HATE the invention of "open all apps and windows back so everything is the same as before restart", no matter if I choose no in the special dialog, it freaking opens the apps and windows which were open prior to restart, which is FRUSTRATING, I have to kill them all as soon as they pop up, pressing CMD+Q repeatedly for a solid minute after EVERY restart – I like my system clean and pristine after I shut it down and up again, but somehow they made it problematic.

[vintagedave]

Yes! Same here! And the same disk space issue.

I remember switching to Mac OS from Windows. That was back in the days where you had to restart Windows, and Windows apps could steal focus. Mac OS X: rarely restarted, soon moving for a good decade to never; and apps could not steal focus, the Dock icon bounced.

Where are we today? I reboot macOS regularly, deal with the same frustrating issues on login, and when I type sometimes a dialog or app steals my keystrokes. That includes permissions dialogs, 'Foo wants to access your Documents folder'. I do not know every app I have granted permissions to, because I do know that I was typing in a text field and the dialog appeared as I was doing it.

I feel there's a loss there of valuing:

* Uptime, or rather, lack of interruption and losing state, as a value for users

* Control: the user is using an app, respect that and don't allow other apps to disrespect and take control away from it, again as value or attitude towards users.

The worst part about the apps restarting is not that they do it, though today it feels a hack to mostly-not-quite restore state that shouldn't have been lost in the first place. It's how long it takes. I have an Apple Silicon Mac. It can take over a minute for apps to restore, Spaces to switch as they re-maximise, etc. And forget trying to interact during that time: if you want to quit an app (say) it's risky because any other app can steal focus and you find yourself in another app while trying to deal with the first.

And Spaces restoration? I have a permanent black Space. It belongs to Parallels, which is actually on another space. And I have one Space with multiple windows: they belong to Fork, and each one should be in its own Space, but they overlap like a mini windowing system.

The bugs. I realise I sound like I'm complaining, but... I am. I paid money for this and I know how good it used to be. I've been seriously looking at Linux and maybe KDE Plasma recently. There's little barrier to switching, not when you actively annoy your users and push them. I did it once (to Mac), and I've been thinking, well, I can do it again.

[gloosx]

The quality of the macos for sure degraded over time. My first MacOS was OSX Lion and after Windows 7 it was feeling like a sport car. Now I'm even scared of attempting this Tahoe upgrade, and I have to use some beta-toggle hacks to evade their intrusive notification pop-up begging me to update.

[InsideOutSanta]

One of the best things I did on my Mac was disable Spotlight and use a search tool that doesn't rely on its index.

Spotlight used to be amazing, but my impression is that it has become really buggy in recent years, filling my disk with garbage and often using a lot of CPU on its indexing threads.

[Cthulhu_]

I have some hacks to make Spotlight not try to for example index the millions of various node_modules files, but it shouldn't need hacks to do so.

[chrisandchris]

Ehm, isn't that going to System Settings -> Spotlight -> Privacy options and adding the folder(s) there?

[QuinceOver]

Interesting. Can you recommend the search tool that you use?

[InsideOutSanta]

I use Find Any File, but there are several others I haven't tested, so I'm not sure which is best. FAF works for me.

[EagnaIonat]

You can use something like Grand Perspective app to find whats taking up all the space.

But for oddness like you mention, run a disk check to make sure it's ok. Failing that do a NVRAM reset.

https://www.macworld.com/article/224955/how-to-reset-a-macs-...

[petecooper]

>Somehow my quite limited disk space (500GB) is getting lower and lower and lower to the point where spotlight will stop working.

I know you didn't ask, but check your Time Machine snapshots in Disk Utility. If you prefer a CLI approach, this should work:

  for d in $(tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates | grep "-"); do sudo tmutil deletelocalsnapshots $d; done

[RegW]

Also didn't ask about docker and "docker system prune".

[thefz]

> My Macbook needs a restart periodically. Somehow my quite limited disk space (500GB) is getting lower and lower and lower to the point where spotlight will stop working. After restart, I magically get 50GB of disk space back, I'm not sure what is wrong with it

Swap space?

[thenthenthen]

Yep

[HlessClaudesman]

I also have a 500gb Mac. Recently I cleaned up HDD using Daisy Disk whilst asking Claude "do I need this?" questions.

Runs much better now.

[msie]

Yup, "open all apps" seems to open apps I have closed before reboot. Seems like a longstanding bug to me.

[thenthenthen]

I think its ram saved to disk everytime you sleep. It doesnt seem to get cleared and builds up over time