"Other Users & Shared" in Mac storage: what it is and how to shrink it

Other Users and Shared Mac storage, listed as Other Users & Shared in Storage settings, is the space taken by files that belong to other accounts on your Mac, or to the folders every account shares. It's usually noticed when the number is large on a Mac only one person uses.

Apple's guide to Storage settings says the category contains files created and modified, or shared, by other user accounts on your Mac.

Storage settings shows only its size. Like macOS and System Data, the category has no information button, so you can't open it, list its files or delete anything from it there.

To shrink it, find out which of a handful of places holds the space: other people's home folders, the Deleted Users folder, home folders left behind by removed accounts, and the Shared folder with its Relocated Items. Then deal with that one place, through Users & Groups settings or Finder.

On a Mac with one account, the usual answer is a home folder that outlived its account, a copy kept by Migration Assistant, or something an app installed in the Shared folder. This post shows how to tell which, and how to get the space back without losing anything that matters.

Where the space in Other Users & Shared comes from

Apple doesn't publish the exact rules Storage settings uses to sort files into this category. Its own advice points to the same places, though: Apple's article on freeing up storage says to delete users who no longer need the Mac, and to check the Users folder for data left by deleted users and for shared files you no longer need.

Where it lives	What it is	What puts it there	How to shrink it
/Users, one folder per account	Other people's home folders	Their own use of the Mac	They tidy their account, or you delete it
/Users/Deleted Users	Disk images of removed accounts	Delete User, or Migration Assistant	Check, copy what's needed, then Trash
/Users, a folder with no account	A home folder kept after its account went	Delete User with the home folder kept	Check, copy what's needed, then Trash
/Users/Shared	Files every account can reach	You, other users, installers and apps	Remove in the app that made it, or Trash
/Users/Shared/Relocated Items	Files a macOS upgrade couldn't put back	macOS upgrades	Read its PDF, then Trash
The Guest User's temporary folder	A guest's files	Guest sessions	macOS deletes it when the guest logs out

The table is a map, not a promise. Apple doesn't say the category is limited to these folders, and Storage settings works its figures out in the background, so the number can lag behind what you change.

What does Apple say the category holds?

Apple's guides for macOS 27 Golden Gate and macOS 26 Tahoe describe the category in the same words: files created and modified, or shared, by other user accounts on your Mac. Both list it with macOS and System Data as categories that only show the space they take.

The name also covers the Shared folder, which is why the category can appear on a Mac with a single account. macOS, installers and some apps put files there, not only other people.

Why does each account see a different number?

Storage settings shows categories from the point of view of the person logged in. Apple's older storage guides said so directly: on a Mac with more than one account, the categories shown are for the user who's logged in.

So on a family Mac, your photos and documents appear as Photos and Documents in your own Storage settings, and as part of Other Users & Shared in everyone else's. Nobody's number is wrong; each person sees their own files by category and the rest as one lump.

Why can't you open it in Storage settings?

The categories with an information button list their files, and you can delete from that list. Apple puts Other Users & Shared among the categories where you can't select and delete files.

That makes sense for a category made largely of other people's private files. The work happens elsewhere: in Users & Groups settings for accounts, and in Finder for the folders in the table above.

The other categories, and what their information buttons offer, are covered in the post on every category in Storage settings.

How the Other Users & Shared category changed over the years

The category is older than its current name. If you help someone with an older Mac, it's worth knowing what they'll see and where.

macOS version	Where you see it	What it's called
High Sierra 10.13 to Big Sur 11	Apple menu › About This Mac › Storage	Other users, later Other Users
Monterey 12	About This Mac › Storage › Manage	Other Users
Ventura 13	System Settings › General › Storage	Other Users
Sonoma 14 and Sequoia 15	System Settings › General › Storage	Other Users & Shared
Tahoe 26 and Golden Gate 27	System Settings › General › Storage	Other Users & Shared

Apple's guides up to Ventura describe the category as files created and modified by other user accounts. The guide for Sonoma was the first to call it Other Users & Shared and to add files shared by other accounts. The description hasn't changed since.

Guides written for older versions that mention Other Users are talking about the same category. Their advice still applies, though the menus they describe have moved.

How to see what's using the space in Finder

Finder can measure most of the places in the first table. You need to be an administrator to remove most of what you find, but anyone can look.

How do you open the Users folder?

1. In Finder, choose Go › Go to Folder.
2. Type /Users and press Return.

You can also select Macintosh HD in the Finder sidebar and open Users. If your startup disk isn't in the sidebar, choose Finder › Settings, click Sidebar and select Hard disks.

Apple's guide to the folders that come with your Mac says Users holds the home folders of everyone set up on the Mac, plus the Shared folder. Your own home folder has a house icon; the others look like ordinary folders.

How do you measure each folder?

Select a folder, such as Shared or Deleted Users, and choose File › Get Info. The Size line fills in once Finder has counted everything inside, which can take a while for a large folder.

To compare them side by side, choose View › as List, then View › Show View Options, and select Calculate all sizes. Click the Size column heading to put the largest first.

Why can't you see inside another person's home folder?

Each account's Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Library and other folders are private to that person. You can open their Public folder, and put items in the Drop Box inside it, but Apple's guide says you can't open any Drop Box but your own.

So Finder can't count what's in another person's private folders, and the size it shows for their home folder can be far smaller than the space it really takes. To see the real figure, log in to that account and open its own Storage settings, or ask the person to.

What if you're not an administrator?

You can still look in the Users folder and measure the Shared folder. You can't delete other accounts, though, and Apple's guide says files in the Shared folder can be edited or deleted only by their owner. Ask an administrator of the Mac to do the rest.

What does what you found point to?

Once you've measured the folders, match the result to its usual cause. Most Macs have one clear answer.

What you found	What it usually means	Where to go next
Another account's folder is large	Someone uses that account	Ask them to tidy it, or delete it if unused
A Deleted Users folder exists	Disk images of removed accounts	Check them, copy what's needed, then remove
A folder in Users with no matching account	A home folder kept after its account went	Check it, copy what's needed, then remove
Two accounts with similar names	A copy made by Migration Assistant	Compare them, then delete the one you don't use
Shared is large	Virtual machines, games or app content	Remove it in the app that put it there
Everything is small	Snapshots, Trash, or a figure still updating	See the section on numbers that won't go down

Other people's accounts: shrink them or delete them

When another account takes most of the space, there are two ways forward. The person can tidy their own account, or, if nobody uses it any more, an administrator can delete it.

Can you shrink another account without deleting it?

Yes, and it's usually the better place to start. Apple's advice is to ask other users to follow the same storage steps after logging in to their own account.

In their own Storage settings, their files appear in the categories with information buttons, such as Documents, Photos, iOS Files and Messages. They can sort, review and remove items there, or move large things to an external drive.

Which parts of an account are usually the largest?

The same things that fill your own account fill other people's. Photos libraries, iPhone backups and Messages attachments are the common heavyweights, followed by Downloads and app caches.

• Photos library10–500 GB · Managed by macOS
• iPhone and iPad backups10–200 GB · Review first
• Messages attachments5–100 GB · Review first
• Downloads and large old files5–100 GB · Review first
• Steam game library10–300 GB · Review first
• App caches2–30 GB · Safe

Typical ranges on Macs that have these items at all, from the research behind the app's catalog. Many accounts hold far less. Each item is counted in its owner's own categories and in Other Users & Shared for everyone else.

Each of these has its own safe route. Photos should be managed in Photos, with Optimize Mac Storage or by moving the library, never by deleting files inside it. Backups of a device that's still in use may be the only copy of it, so they're worth keeping until a newer one exists.

When should you delete an account?

When nobody uses it. Typical cases are an account made for a child who now has their own Mac, a test account, an old account for someone who has left, or a second copy of your own account made during a migration.

Before you do, talk to the person if you can, and copy anything they want to keep. Deleting the home folder can't be undone, and the account's files may include things no one else has.

What about the Guest User?

A guest isn't a lasting cause. Apple's guide says files a guest creates go into a temporary folder that's deleted, with its contents, when the guest logs out. If you never use it, you can turn off Allow guests to log in to this computer in the Guest User settings.

Sharing Only users take no space for files either. They can reach shared folders over the network but can't log in to the Mac, and Apple notes that they don't have a home folder.

How to delete a user and free the space on macOS 27 and 26

The steps are the same in macOS 27 Golden Gate and macOS 26 Tahoe. You need to be an administrator, and the account you delete must not be logged in.

What are the steps?

1. Ask the person to log out, or restart the Mac. Apple's guide says you can't select a user who is logged in.
2. Choose Apple menu › System Settings, then click Users & Groups in the sidebar. You may need to scroll down.
3. Click the information button next to the user, then click Delete User. You may need to enter an administrator's password.
4. Choose what happens to the home folder, then click Delete User.

Apple says the Delete User option doesn't appear for a user who's logged in, or when the Mac has only one user. Sharing-only users are deleted at once, since they have no home folder.

What does each option do with the home folder?

The choice in the last step decides whether you get any space back. Apple describes three options.

Option	What happens to the home folder	Space freed	Can the user be restored?
Save the home folder in a disk image	Archived as a disk image in /Users/Deleted Users	Little or none while the image stays on the Mac	Yes, from the disk image
Don't change the home folder	Stays where it was, in /Users	None	Yes
Delete the home folder	Deleted from the Mac	All of it, once snapshots let go	No

Only the last option frees the space. The first two are ways to remove the account while keeping its files, and their files carry on counting in Other Users & Shared until you move or remove them.

Which option should you choose?

If the person's files matter and you have a backup or an external drive, the safest order is to save the home folder in a disk image, copy that image to the drive, check that it opens there, and then remove it from the Mac.

If you're certain nothing in the account is needed, choose Delete the home folder. If you're not sure yet, choose Don't change the home folder: the account is gone, the files stay, and you can decide later.

Why didn't the space come back right away?

If you back up with Time Machine, its local snapshots hold on to deleted files until they age out, which Apple says takes about 24 hours. Until then, the space shows up in System Data rather than as free space. The guide to Time Machine local snapshots covers them.

Storage settings also needs time to count again. Close it, wait a few minutes, and open it again before deciding the delete didn't work.

Deleted Users and home folders without an account

Two of the places in the first table hold the files of accounts that no longer exist. They're among the first things to check on a Mac with one person on it.

What is the Deleted Users folder?

It's where macOS keeps disk images of removed accounts. Apple's guide says that choosing Save the home folder in a disk image archives the user's documents and information, so the user can be restored later, and saves the image in /Users/Deleted Users.

Migration Assistant can fill it too. When an account you're bringing over has the same name as one already on the new Mac, Apple says you can replace the existing account and may be offered to keep a copy of its data in the Deleted Users folder.

How do you check what's in a saved disk image?

Open the Deleted Users folder and double-click the disk image. It opens in Finder like an external disk, and you can browse it and copy anything you need into your own folders or onto an external drive. Eject it when you're done.

The image is the user's whole home folder, so it can be as large as their account was. Check the obvious places first: Desktop, Documents, Pictures and Movies.

Is it safe to delete what's in Deleted Users?

Yes, once you've checked it and copied what's needed. Removing the disk image is the end of that account: Apple's route for restoring the user depends on it. Move the image to the Trash in Finder, which asks for an administrator's name and password, then empty the Trash to free the space.

If you'd rather keep it, copy the image to an external drive first, open it there to make sure the copy works, and then remove the original from the Mac.

What about a home folder whose account is gone?

Choosing Don't change the home folder leaves the folder in /Users with its original name, with no account to log in to it. It still takes its full size, and it's counted under Other Users & Shared.

Before removing such a folder, open Users & Groups settings and make sure no current account uses it. The folder is named after the account name, which can differ from the full name you see in the list. Then copy what's needed and move the folder to the Trash.

Did Migration Assistant make a second account?

It may have. Apple says that if an account with the same name already exists on the new Mac, you can rename the old one instead of replacing it, which keeps both accounts so you can log in to them separately.

If you see two accounts with similar names in Users & Groups, one of them may be a copy of the other. Log in to the one you don't use, check what's in it, and delete it once you know nothing in it is missing from the other.

The Shared folder and what apps put in it

The Shared folder is the one part of this category that isn't tied to an account. Apple's guides say it's in the Users folder of Macintosh HD and that items in it are available to anyone who uses the Mac.

What is the Shared folder for?

It's a place to make a file available to everyone. Apple's guide says files in the Shared folder can be read by all users of the Mac but edited or deleted only by their owner, unless permissions are changed.

Apps use it for the same reason. Something installed there can be used from every account without a copy for each person, which is useful for large content such as virtual machines and games.

What do apps put in the Shared folder?

A few examples are well documented:

• Parallels Desktop lists /Users/Shared/Parallels among the folders where it stores virtual machines. Each one holds a whole computer's disk, so they're often tens of gigabytes.
• Battle.net keeps a cache folder for Blizzard games in /Users/Shared/Blizzard/Battle.net. Blizzard says removing it doesn't affect game data, and Battle.net makes it again.
• Games and launchers can leave large files behind when they're removed. In one Apple Community thread, about 93 GB of one person's Other Users & Shared figure turned out to be a game's files, left after its launcher was uninstalled.

Folders from apps you've deleted stay behind too. Removing an app from Applications doesn't remove what it put in the Shared folder, and the guide to uninstalling apps properly covers where else apps leave things.

Is it safe to delete things in the Shared folder?

Item by item, after checking what each one is. The Shared folder itself belongs to macOS, so leave it in place even when it's empty.

What you find	What it is	What to do
Relocated Items, Previously Relocated Items	Files a macOS upgrade moved aside	Read the PDF inside, then move to the Trash
Parallels	Virtual machines	Remove them in Parallels Desktop
Blizzard, with Battle.net inside	Battle.net's cache	Quit Battle.net, then move it to the Trash
A folder from an app you removed	Content the app installed	Check it, then move it to the Trash
Files someone put there to share	Another person's files	Ask them before you remove anything
The Shared folder itself	A folder macOS expects	Keep it

For an app you still use, remove its content inside the app. Parallels, for example, removes a virtual machine from its Control Center, and the app then knows it's gone.

How do you remove items you don't own?

Select them in Finder and choose File › Move to Trash. When an item belongs to another account or to macOS, Finder asks for an administrator's name and password before it moves it. Then empty the Trash to free the space.

If you can't get an item to move, the post on why the Trash won't empty goes through permissions, locked files and items in use.

Relocated Items after a macOS upgrade

Many people find a Relocated Items folder, or several, in the Shared folder and wonder whether it explains the space. It rarely does, but it's worth knowing what it is.

Why is there a Relocated Items folder?

Since macOS Catalina, macOS runs from a separate, read-only system volume. Apple says that when the upgrade created that volume, files that couldn't be moved to their new location were placed in /Users/Shared/Relocated Items, with a shortcut on the desktop and a PDF explaining what's inside.

Apple's article says to check the folder for any files you can't find after the upgrade. Most of the time it holds copies of system settings files you never edited.

Why are there several Previously Relocated Items folders?

Apple's article describes one folder, but later updates can add more. On one Mac running macOS 27, checked for this post, the Shared folder held seven of them, made over about 18 months: Relocated Items for the newest, and Previously Relocated Items, then Previously Relocated Items 1 to 5, for the older ones.

Each was between 56 and 60 KB, holding copies of a few configuration files from macOS's own settings folder. Together they came to well under half a megabyte.

Can you delete Relocated Items?

Yes, once you've opened the PDF and checked that nothing in it is a file you changed and want back. They belong to macOS, so Finder asks for an administrator's password to move them to the Trash.

Don't expect much from it, though. If Other Users & Shared is tens of gigabytes, Relocated Items aren't the reason, and the space is in a home folder, Deleted Users, or something an app put in the Shared folder.

When the number won't go down

Sometimes you remove what you found and the figure barely moves. A few causes account for almost every case.

Did you empty the Trash?

Items you move to the Trash keep using space until it's emptied. That includes other accounts' folders and disk images you removed with an administrator's password. Empty the Trash, then check again.

Are local snapshots holding the space?

Time Machine's local snapshots keep deleted files until the snapshots are removed, usually within a day. While they last, the space moves from Other Users & Shared into System Data instead of becoming free. Wait a day, or remove the snapshots in Time Machine's settings if you need the space now.

Is Storage settings still counting?

Storage settings works out its figures in the background, and right after a big change it can show old numbers or Calculating for a while. Close it and open it again a few minutes later.

Is the space somewhere you didn't look?

Apple describes the category by who created or shared the files, not by one folder. If the folders in Users add up to far less than the category, a tool that scans the whole disk as an administrator will show where the rest is.

The post on how to check storage on a Mac explains why the different views of the disk rarely agree, which helps when two figures seem to contradict each other.

Mistakes to avoid

Most problems with this category come from treating it as one folder you can empty. It's several kinds of data, and some of it is other people's only copy.

Don't drag a live account's home folder to the Trash

Delete accounts in Users & Groups settings. Removing a home folder in Finder while its account still exists leaves an account without its files and settings, and skips the choice Apple gives you to keep them.

Don't remove the Users or Shared folders themselves

Both belong to macOS. Remove items inside the Shared folder, never the folder, and never the Users folder that holds everyone's home folders.

Don't take over someone else's folders

Changing permissions to open another person's private folders means reading files that aren't yours, and permission changes inside a home folder are easy to get wrong. Ask them to tidy their account, or delete it properly if it's no longer used.

Don't delete the only copy

Home folders and disk images of old accounts are often the last copy of someone's photos and documents. Back up first, with Time Machine or a copy on an external drive, and check the copy opens before removing the original.

Don't paste Terminal commands from a web page

Guides that tell you to measure or clear these folders by pasting commands are easy to get wrong, and commands that delete files can't be undone. Everything in this post works through Finder and System Settings.

How the app does it

Wombit is a native Mac app that shows what's using your storage, explains every item in plain language, and clears it safely: Trash first, undoable and logged. Its scan covers the whole disk or any folder, including the Users and Shared folders, and reads only names, sizes and dates.

On the map, select a folder to see what it is and how large it really is. Hard links and APFS clones count once.

Folders macOS didn't let it read are listed under Folders the Scan Didn't Read, not skipped. Another account's private folders show up as a gap you can see, rather than a total that's quietly too small.

Items in the Shared folder that the catalog knows are explained like everything else, with their level:

• /Users/Shared/Blizzard/Battle.net

  Battle.net cache

  Temporary files that the Battle.net app keeps for Blizzard games.

  Safe · Moves it to the Trash

• ~/Parallels/*.{pvm,macvm}

  Parallels Desktop virtual machines

  Virtual machines you created in Parallels Desktop, each stored as one package with its disks and settings.

  Review first · Explained only: the app shows you how

• ~/.Trash

  Trash

  Items you've moved to the Trash. They still use space until the Trash is emptied.

  Review first · Explained only: the app shows you how

The Battle.net cache is Safe and starts checked in Cleanup. Parallels virtual machines are Review first: they wait for your choice, and their entry says to remove them in Parallels Desktop. In a cleanup's review, items that belong to macOS or another user are listed under Needs an Administrator. File names and paths never leave your Mac.

The analyzer and the map are free. Cleanup and items that need an administrator are PRO: one payment of $4.99 with lifetime access. Every Pro tool's review is free to open, so you see what would go and why before you buy.