53 comments

  • Daniel FoscoDaniel Fosco, over 8 years ago

    Disable Sketch to fill up your system's hard-drive with hundreds of gigabytes now with this one trick!

    Hard-drive companies hate it!

    22 points
  • Liam StanleyLiam Stanley, over 8 years ago (edited over 8 years ago )

    I knew this problem before, and this is my solution, use OnyX to auto clean Auto Versions Of Document. This trick saves my 128G SSD.

    http://cl.ly/image/2T0b0C3I151q

    OnyX (Free) : http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/11582/onyx

    12 points
    • Sam LuSam Lu, over 8 years ago

      This worked! Mac is now silky smooth. Thanks Tinh N.

      0 points
    • Alex MartinezAlex Martinez, over 8 years ago

      Thanks man! Worked for me too! As long as it doesn't cause any performance issues with Sketch, it seems like a great solution. It got me back my missing 200 gb:)

      0 points
    • Abdulrahman JarallahAbdulrahman Jarallah, over 8 years ago (edited over 8 years ago )

      Thanks man! Worked like a charm! Used to use Onyx as my main maintenance tool, im glad it's still great tool!

      0 points
    • Guy Faithfull, over 7 years ago

      Thanks for sharing this tip. I was down to 6GB on my MacBook Air after mainly using Sketch. After installing and running OnyX I regained 48GB. What a saviour! Appreciatively, Guy.

      0 points
    • Michael Patrick Goss, over 7 years ago

      This worked amazingly well! Thank you SO MUCH for sharing this, Tin Nguyen!!!

      After repeatedly removing files and having my hard drive filled up over and over again, my HD was at less than 1GB and I now have a whopping 349GB available!

      Thanks again, Tinh!!!

      1 point
    • Marek MinorMarek Minor, over 7 years ago

      Worked for me (90GB down). Thanks much!

      0 points
  • Robbert EsserRobbert Esser, over 8 years ago

    Thank you, now I know why I'm missing 140GB of storage.

    3 points
  • Alex MartinezAlex Martinez, over 8 years ago

    I hope Bohemian gets back to this soon. I've still got 100+ GB of space taken up on my hard drive.

    3 points
  • Chris Welch, over 8 years ago

    I've been using Sketch for months now and am consistently working on around 8 documents at a time that are all about ~80MB in size.

    Ran that terminal command and it's telling me that my revisions folder is 17GB. Really curious how some of you are getting those crazy numbers.

    2 points
    • John FlynnJohn Flynn, over 8 years ago

      Same. ~7 months' worth of full-time Sketch work, 22GB. If I had to guess, it could be extremely bitmap-heavy files with a million artboards? No idea, and not running into this problem.

      1 point
  • Sam LuSam Lu, over 8 years ago (edited over 8 years ago )

    389 GB

    389 gb O_O I'm shocked! You've made my day. Thanks

    1 point
  • Chris KnutsonChris Knutson, over 8 years ago

    Thank you. Daily Sketch user here. Freed up 217GB. Did I win or lose?

    1 point
  • Abdulrahman JarallahAbdulrahman Jarallah, over 8 years ago (edited over 8 years ago )

    Explains everything. 47gb! I use Sketch in daily basis fyi.

    1 point
  • Arjun PenemetsaArjun Penemetsa, over 8 years ago

    Only 1 gig here, I'm probably not a power user but I also tend to create multiple versions of the file and sometimes delete older versions. Which might help?

    Did anyone try copying the contents of the file to a new file or duplicate the file and delete the original? You might lose history but it might reclaim space?

    1 point
    • Brent RiddellBrent Riddell, over 8 years ago

      around 5.7gb for me, but i've used sketch almost exclusively for over a year now, and i do the same as you, smaller files, and more of them (1 file per feature/new file per major revision) so it must basically negate this problem, since i have ALOT of files, but they are all pretty small and the revisions folder isn't that big :)

      0 points
  • Florian Schulz, over 8 years ago

    I ran into no more available space a few times already. I usually just delete the complete revisions folder.

    You can only delete all revisions but since I’m mainly using web based tools besides Sketch that isn’t such a big deal.

    Here is how to delete the revisions and claim back your disk space: http://osxdaily.com/2012/02/20/clear-versions-history-auto-save-cache-data-in-mac-os-x/

    1 point
    • Thibault MaekelberghThibault Maekelbergh, over 8 years ago

      The main problem with this is that it's said to give slow and bad performance with Sketch so while it's a fix to delete the humongous database, it's also a risk to take when you rely on Sketch for the job I think…

      0 points
  • Eli SladeEli Slade, over 8 years ago

    That's where my missing 167GB went.

    1 point
  • Viral JoganiViral Jogani, over 8 years ago

    I've been tearing my hair out of my head trying to figure out the issue after the "hard drive is full" alert kept on coming up. Have deleted and transferred so many files and the thing wouldn't go away.

    Tuns out there's 33GB of data in the folder. Any way to remove all of it without affecting system performance?

    1 point
  • JT White, over 8 years ago

    damn 114GB... I've been debating if I need a new computer over the past couple months because my machine has been soooo sluggish. Wonder if this is the cause...

    1 point
  • Wentin ZWentin Z, over 8 years ago

    SO HELPFUL! I have been bothered by the startup drive full alert for months and I have tried everything: at first I deleted all my video files and it works for a few weeks. but the alert came back then I deleted everything in download folder, including a few software which happened to live there. Spent some time to get back those software and it lasts for a few weeks and again, drive is full. This time I spent some time looking into drive cleanup software and tried a few, some aren't cheap, and it cleaned up 10+g, but compare to the real cause, of course 10+g won't last that long. Now I have found the real cause, and I just took the risk and hard delete this folder and turn off the version control. Thanks so much, save me so much time

    1 point
  • Alex ChanAlex Chan, over 8 years ago

    I use Sketch quite a bit and am at 14GB.

    1 point
  • Louis-André LabadieLouis-André Labadie, over 8 years ago (edited over 8 years ago )

    Bloody hell, thank you for this!

    I have 41 used gigabytes in here, and I don't use Sketch that much.

    I don't know why you're expecting alt text

    1 point
  • Wim MulderWim Mulder, over 7 years ago

    So I'm running into this issue as well, but before I go ahead and clear it I'm wondering will this get rid of my version history within my Sketch files? I use this every now and then to go back to a previous version of the file, would be a shame if this all got erased.

    0 points
  • Andrea MontiniAndrea Montini, over 8 years ago

    Ran into this trouble a few months ago and did not find much stuff on that over the web. Now it seems to be a really common problem. I've also emailed the guys at Bohemian and they did reply I was the only one so far ... I have to manually delete the entire folder once a month to free up almost 50gigs every time. Boring. Please, get rid of this.

    0 points
    • dh .dh ., 8 years ago

      This command will delete the cache from sketch, open program called terminal and enter this command, it will ask for your password - enter your computer password.

      sudo rm -rf /.DocumentRevisions-V100/.cs/ChunkStorage/

      0 points
  • Claude AyiteyClaude Ayitey, over 8 years ago

    Just 4.4GB here, still seems a lot because I don't use Sketch that much. Say, once in a week.

    0 points
  • Joshua MillerJoshua Miller, over 8 years ago

    Excellent resource. Thanks for this!

    0 points
  • Matthew O'ConnorMatthew O'Connor, over 8 years ago (edited over 8 years ago )

    My folder was 177GB full! I followed Tinh Nguyen suggestion of using OnyX and it has reduced it down to 248k

    0 points
  • Brett JonesBrett Jones, over 8 years ago (edited over 8 years ago )

    Wow this explains a lot — I thought I had a faulty SSD. Unfortunately, I get this when I try to run the command to disable ApplePersistence... :\

    → defaults write -app ‘sketch’ ApplePersistence -bool no

    2015-06-03 10:08:27.173 defaults[1214:49125] Couldn't find an application named "‘sketch’"; defaults unchanged

    0 points
  • Toffeenut DesignToffeenut Design, over 8 years ago

    Thank you for sharing this! :O

    0 points
  • Ron Besseling, over 8 years ago

    Mine is 246GB . Did anyone already find a way to clear the folder without affecting performance?

    Thank you for writing this article. It explains a lot...

    0 points
  • Daniel FoscoDaniel Fosco, over 8 years ago

    “Only” 37GB here.

    0 points
  • Courtney ⭐️Courtney ⭐️, over 8 years ago

    It's funny how we're all simultaneously having this problem because all our MacBook Pro's are filling up at the same time :0

    I posted some links in this thread for how to remove the revisions folder that were helpful.

    https://www.designernews.co/stories/50043-hard-drive-mysteriously-filling-up

    0 points
  • Josiah DJosiah D, over 8 years ago

    19GB here. Although suddenly I'm terrified of doing freelance work on an older machine with only 20GB free o_o

    0 points
  • Bruno MarinhoBruno Marinho, over 8 years ago

    36Gb here. for a 256GB Harddrive is a lot

    0 points
  • Floyd WilliamsonFloyd Williamson, over 8 years ago (edited over 8 years ago )

    129gb.

    I just deleted the folder. Yosemite will create a new one on restart.

    No performance issues for me, and I have all that space back.

    0 points
  • Matt WilliamsMatt Williams, over 8 years ago

    Dang. Good find.

    0 points
  • Marko VuleticMarko Vuletic, over 8 years ago

    Thanks for this!

    0 points
  • Kody DahlKody Dahl, over 8 years ago

    Ran the command; it's 28G on my machine. I'm really interested what (if any) the size cap on version control is in Mac OS - anybody have any idea?

    0 points
  • Brennan Smith, over 8 years ago

    Thank you very much for taking the time to write this article.

    0 points
    • Thomas DegryThomas Degry, over 8 years ago

      No problem! I'm curious to hear how big the folder is on other designer's computers! So if you had the same issue let us know how bad it was!

      1 point
      • Chase ThompsonChase Thompson, over 8 years ago

        I have a very new laptop, and I've only done one or two Sketch projects on it so far. I was shocked to see that my version folder was 102 gb! Granted, one of the projects was a very image heavy site, but I was very surprised to see how large it was.

        0 points
      • Brennan Smith, over 8 years ago

        4.3 gigs but this is after I deleted the .DocumentRevisions-V100 folder, which was 96 gigs a couple of weeks ago. Now I am concerned about performance.

        0 points