I'm extremely worried about my MacBook. I tried updating to the official release of macOS Catalina a few hours ago but instantly hit a problem. I have not installed any beta releases beforehand.

I downloaded the updated and selected my drive as the install location. After a few minutes of the update seeming to go as normal, I was thrown a screen which said something like "macOS could not be updated on your Mac, there is not enough free space". It gave me the option to restart so I did that, hoping that I'd be able to log in and clear some more space for the install.

However, I restarted, entered my password then it seemed like the update instantly resumed. A few minutes later, the same error popped up so I pressed restart once more and the same cycle happened again.

Frustrated, I tried the obvious booting into recovery mode and selecting my main drive as the startup disk but whilst I was able to enter recovery mode, I wasn't able to select the disk - it didn't appear. I also tried booting into safe mode with no success.

I have done a lot of googling and most guides say something like "restart, log in and free up some space". The issue is, I can't log in. When I try to, it chucks me back into the update and the process repeats.

I would greatly appreciate it if someone could help me out - this issue is really concerning as I'm currently unable to use my MacBook and really need it for my studies.