Team Fortress 2/Steam - Disk Space Issue on Mac OS

[Darkat5]

SHORT STORY - I tried to download Team Fortress 2 on my brother's Macbook; I had 24Gb free space on my HDD while it needs only 20Gb; It was downloading just fine; but I needed to restart Steam a couple times, so I did; Now Steam shows the TF 2 download never started and needs to install fresh; but now Steam shows that my HDD has 18Gb instead of 24Gb, (Even after deleting all files and the folder itself where it was being installed), while my system shows it has the original 24Gb; I tried to clear cache, restart both Steam and Mac, reinstall Steam, flush steam config, read about 20 different forum posts; but nothing seems to work. Help!




LONG STORY - So I downloaded TF2 for myself on my windows pc and wanted to do the same for my brother on his macbook. As mentioned above I had 24Gb free so installing the game wasn't a problem.
But then I had a stupid idea of increasing my download speed (it was doing fine at 1 Mbps [same on my windows pc]) and so I read somewhere that changing download regions helps. I tried a couple of regions and the download speed maintained at 1 Mbps everywhere so I gave up and returned to my original region after one last restart.
Only problem was that the download didn't resume anymore. It just disappeared. I checked my Steam Library and it shows [0] downloads, [0] installed, [0] recent, etc; I opened the game's page via store and it shows the game is in my steam library but not installed, so I click [Play Game] and it shows me that the HDD only has 18Gb of free space.
I went back and deleted the folder that was installed previously even from the Trash (like a smug punk thinking that would solve things); restarted Steam so it would show the correct disk space now but it didn't.
So I restarted the Macbook; nope.
Deleted Steam cache; nope.
Used steam://flushconfig; nope.
Deleted the Steam folder from the Mac Library; nope.
Uninstalled and Reinstalled Steam; nope.

It's been 12 hours of doing this non-stop with no change whatsoever.

Kindly help if you can.

[Rockscissors]

I just had the same problem with Xcom 2. Just uninstalled after finishing it and my steam assessment of my hard drive is 30 instead of 60gb. This is preventing me from installing some games.

[VolerZV😈PSEVDO]

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[Darkat5]

Its been a while since I solved the problem...

But I remember it has something to do with temporary backups the Time Machine app makes after/before deleting files. It acts as a ghost file.

Try finding it on the HDD.

I am so sorry I cant remember so well.

It has something to do with checking storage of the HDD and finding a hidden or temporary folder which takes the same amount of space as the thing you deleted.

P.S. - Make sure you know what you are about to delete before deleting these hidden folders.