Music Library Taking Up Space on Your Mac? Don't Delete ~/Music

No, this is your dataDiskmack safety tier: Your files

~/Music

No, do not delete your ~/Music folder. It holds your actual music: every song you imported, ripped, or downloaded, plus the library database the Music app depends on. Purchased tracks can be downloaded again from Apple, but anything you imported yourself is gone permanently. There are safer ways to get that space back, and they are below.

What it is

~/Music is the home folder location where macOS keeps your audio. The biggest resident is usually the Music app's library (the folder is ~/Music/Music on modern macOS, or ~/Music/iTunes on Macs that migrated from the old iTunes days). Inside it you'll find a Media folder with the actual audio files and a library database that tracks playlists, play counts, ratings, and where every file lives. GarageBand and Logic users often have project folders here too.

It grows for ordinary reasons. Lossless and hi-res downloads from Apple Music are large, often 20 to 50 MB per track. Years of ripped CDs add up. If you use Apple Music offline, every song you tapped the download button on is sitting in this folder. Libraries of a few gigabytes are typical, and serious collections reach 50 to 100 GB or more. None of that is cache or junk. It is the real copy of your music.

Is it safe to delete?

Treat this folder as your data, because it is. If you delete ~/Music, imported and ripped files cannot be recovered from anywhere but a backup. Music you purchased from the iTunes Store can be downloaded again, and Apple Music subscription tracks can be re-downloaded as long as you keep paying, but playlists, ratings, and play history live in the library database, and losing that hurts even if the audio survives. Diskmack identifies ~/Music automatically and classifies it as personal data, not junk, so it will never offer to bulk-clean it.

There is also a quieter failure mode: deleting audio files in Finder while the Music app still references them. The app doesn't know you did it, so you end up with a library full of dead entries that point at nothing. If you want tracks gone, remove them inside the Music app. If you want the space back without losing anything, move the whole library to an external drive.

How to check its size

In Finder: In Finder, choose Go > Go to Folder (or press Shift-Command-G), type ~/Music, and press Return. Select the Music (or iTunes) folder inside, then press Command-I to see its size in the Get Info window.

In Terminal:

du -sh ~/Music

The shell expands ~ to your home folder, so this reports the total size of the whole music folder. For just the library, run: du -sh ~/Music/Music.

How to clean it

Open the Music app and switch to the Songs view. Use the Downloaded section in the sidebar to see exactly which tracks are stored on this Mac.
For Apple Music subscription tracks you don't need offline, right-click a song (or a selection) and choose Remove Download. The music stays in your library and streams when you play it, but the local file is freed.
For imported or purchased tracks you truly want gone, delete them inside the Music app: select them, press Delete, and choose Move to Trash. This keeps the library database consistent.
To keep everything while freeing the internal drive, quit Music, copy the entire ~/Music/Music folder to an external drive, then hold Option while launching Music and choose the copied library.
Play a few songs from the relocated library to confirm it works, then move the original folder to the Trash and empty it.

Never delete audio files directly in Finder while the Music app still lists them. You'll be left with broken library entries that point at files that no longer exist.

Will it come back?

The folder grows exactly as fast as you add to it, no faster. Unlike a cache, nothing here regenerates on its own. If you remove Apple Music downloads and later tap the download button again for offline listening, those files return at full size, and lossless downloads make that happen quickly. A library moved to an external drive stays put, though a fresh ~/Music/Music folder will reappear on the internal drive if you ever launch Music without the external drive connected and let it create a new library.

Common questions

I only stream with Apple Music. Why is this folder huge?

Streaming itself uses little space, but every song, album, or playlist you downloaded for offline listening is stored here as a full audio file. Lossless quality makes the files several times larger. In the Music app, use Songs view with the Downloaded filter, then Remove Download on anything you can stream instead.

There's an old iTunes folder inside ~/Music. Can I delete that?

Not blindly. When macOS migrated iTunes to the Music app, some Macs kept the old ~/Music/iTunes folder, and in some cases the new library still points at media inside it. Open Music, check Settings > Files to see where your media folder actually is, and only consider removing the iTunes folder if the active library lives elsewhere and a full backup exists.

Can I move my music library to an external drive?

Yes, and it's the best fix for a large collection. Quit Music, copy ~/Music/Music to the external drive, hold Option while reopening Music, and pick the copied library. Verify playback before deleting the original. The drive needs to be connected whenever you use the app.

If I delete a purchased song, can I really get it back?

Purchases from the iTunes Store can be re-downloaded from your account, and Apple Music tracks re-download while your subscription is active. But files you ripped from CDs or imported from elsewhere exist only in this folder and your backups. Apple has no copy of those to give back to you.