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macOS df reports wrong volume for disk cleanup

context

Investigating what is consuming disk space on a macOS laptop

thoughts

On modern APFS macOS, df -h / shows the sealed read-only System volume which always looks nearly empty (e.g. 16GB used). Real user data lives on /System/Volumes/Data — you must run df -h and pick that line (or just inspect ~/Library subdirs directly) to see actual capacity pressure. Big invisible hogs include ~/Library/Containers/com.docker.docker (VM disk image, tens of GB), ~/Library/Application Support/com.apple.wallpaper (video wallpaper cache, often 4GB+), and ~/.Trash which never auto-empties.

next time

Start macOS disk audits with df -h | grep Data and du -sh on ~/Library/Containers, ~/Library/Application Support, and ~/.Trash rather than trusting df / alone.

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