How To Clean Up Your Mac Storage

Back in the days when Macs had difficult drives nosotros all had tons of space on our Macs, but the SSDs that feature in our Macs at present are more limited in chapters, and loftier-res video, photos, music and other essential files take up more storage than ever.

Running out of space can really hamper your computing: if y'all want your Mac to run rapidly you need to brand sure you lot've got something like 10 percent of your storage free at all times otherwise your Mac can really slow downward (read: How to speed up a Mac). At worst if you don't delete some of the things taking upwardly storage space on your Mac you lot may even observe you can't kickoff it upward one day considering the startup disk is full! You may be seeing warnings that your start-upwardly disk is almost full - you lot shouldn't ignore them.

Yous may also demand to clear some space on your Mac is if you are installing an operating system update. When Apple released macOS Big Sur in 2020, for example, a lot of Mac users institute that they didn't have plenty free space to install the new macOS (read: Non enough infinite for Big Sur). We are anticipating similar problems when macOS Monterey arrives on 25 Oct 2021. Under those circumstances yous are probable to look for the quick and easy ways to free up infinite on a Mac - so finding how to find out what is taking upwards the space on your Mac, and the best way to remove information technology, will exist your priority.

If you aren't certain how to see how much disk space your Mac has read: How to check how much disk space y'all have.

In this article nosotros walk you through uncomplicated steps that will help you identify what is taking up infinite on your Mac, what you can and tin't delete, the safest way to remove the biggest space hogs, and how to manage the storage on your Mac and then that you never run out of infinite over again.

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How to clear space on Mac quickly

There are lots of ideas beneath for freeing up disk space beneath, simply if yous are in a hurry and you lot don't need a lot of space, or if you aren't too bothered about making sure you don't run out of space once again, here are a few things you can do right at present:

1. Click on your Downloads folder, open it in the Finder, and select the contents, or any files you don't need, correct-click and choose Move to Bin/Trash.
2. Open the Finder and navigate to your Home folder (printing Shift-command-H). Now printing Control-F to open a new Find window. Click on the drop downwardly beside 'Kind' and choose 'Other'. Coil down until you run across 'File Size' and check the box next to it. Click OK. Now in the next dropdown choose 'is greater than'. Modify file size to MB and type 100 into the box besides that. Now select anything that y'all don't need that's bigger than 100MB and chose Movement to Bin/Trash.
3. You could set up upward a similar search to delete files y'all haven't opened in the by year or longer. Instead of Kind cull Last opened date. Instead of 'is' choose 'before' and modify the date to a year ago. Select and right-click on files you are sure you won't demand once more and choose Move to Bin/Trash.
4. If you are anything like us your Desktop is a dumping footing. Open up the Finder again and cull the Desktop folder. Sort past Size and delete anything you don't need that'southward particularly large. Alternatively sort by Kind to rapidly locate all the Screenshots (which will exist PNG files). Select those you lot want to delete and choose Motion to Bin/Trash.
5. Some other way to delete screenshots is to go to your Desktop and if you lot haven't already washed so get to the menu and cull View > Use Stacks (you'll need to accept the Desktop selected). Now notice your Screenshot folder. Click on information technology to open it upwards and so select as many Screenshots as you are comfortable deleting. You lot can click and drag these to the Trash/Bin. You could do the aforementioned with other files on your Desktop (information technology's where near things end upward afterwards all).
6. Now the final and well-nigh important step: Correct-click on your Trash/Bin and choose Empty Trash/Empty Bin (nosotros are doing this terminal as we've just added lots to the Trash!)

This might recover a few GB for you lot, and if that's all you need and so job washed! Simply if yous demand to go a lot more space, and if you want to avoid running low on infinite again then follow the steps beneath.

How to run across what'due south taking up space on Mac

If y'all are running out of space your Mac could exist slowing down, which is bad plenty, but if yous run out of space on your Mac you may non fifty-fifty be able to start it upwardly! Before y'all get to that stage have a look to see what it taking up the infinite on your Mac considering that will determine what you lot should delete.

At that place are several apps that will show you which files are taking upwardly big chunks of deejay infinite, or permit you to guild files in the Finder based on their size.

Free or cheap apps like GrandPerspective and DaisyDisk (£9.99/$9.99, buy it here) give good visual indications while OmniDiskSweeper uses the standard hierarchical file window to show the sizes of every file and folder. CleanMyMac (which costs around £30/$30) shows disk usage as role of its cleanup features. Parallels Toolbox (around £15/$15) likewise has a Clean Drive tool forth with lots of other useful tools.

However, before you spend whatever money, it's actually really like shooting fish in a barrel to get an overview of what'south taking up the infinite on your Mac.

1. Click on the Apple logo in the peak left.
2. Choose About This Mac.
3. Click on the Storage tab and wait while it calculates. Eventually you lot will run across various bars indicating how much storage is given to certain things, and how much storage is bachelor.

   

4. Hover over the different bars to see what each represents and how much space they are taking up. For example, in our case yellow was Photos (less than 10GB considering we store them in iCloud, but you lot could have 100GB+ of Photos).

This view shows you how much infinite certain things are taking up, merely how do you delete the stuff that is taking upward the space?

What are System and Other?

We'll starting time with the two biggest culprits, at least in our case: Other and System - and that's probable to be the example for you too. Y'all may be wondering if you can delete Other. That isn't something you tin do easily - and nor should you. We explain How to delete Other on a Mac in a dissever article though.

The same goes for Organisation. It would be unwise to delete the vast majority of your Organization files, only there are a few that you tin can probably do without, such as Time Auto snapshots, iOS backups, and and so on. We also have a split article about what's in Arrangement and what you tin delete.

Tools like CleanMyMac Ten can aid yous deal with these Other and Organisation files. CleanMyMac is £29.95/$29.95 (here'due south where you tin download CleanMyMac). We also have a round upwardly of the Best Mac Cleaners in which we look at a number of alternatives to CleanMyMac including: DaisyDisk, MacBooster, Parallels ToolBox, and MacCleaner Pro.

How Apple helps you save space

Moving on from Other and Arrangement we are left with a number of things we can delete from our Macs - and Apple makes it really easy to do so.

Click on the Apple tree logo > Almost This Mac > Storage and now click on Manage.

On the left of this window Apple shows you how much space is attributed to the various unlike things on your Mac. Bated from System and Other, which are greyed out, you can click on any of these and get to options that help you delete whatsoever storage hogs. Nosotros'll go through each of these options in the sections below.

In the eye of the window Apple tree offers you Recommendations to help you lot regain some of the space on your Mac. You can make various tweaks including choosing to store files in iCloud, optimising storage, setting your Bin/Trash to empty automatically, or reviewing files to reduce clutter. We'll explain each of these options in the sections below.

Store in iCloud

We think that the selection to Shop in iCloud should exist your first port of call if you desire to reclaim lots of space on your Mac. Apple tree'due south actually upgraded iCloud - information technology's now iCloud+ and includes a number of additional features, but the cost hasn't gone upwards. Read: iCloud becomes iCloud+, with range of new features.

The Store in iCloud choice gives you the option of storing files in iCloud. It'southward a swell option if you lot accept limited storage on your Mac: go yourself a nice clamper of storage in the deject and go on everything you lot need at that place. If y'all don't mind paying for it this is a great way to extend the storage available to y'all.

Apple gives users 5GB of iCloud storage for free, but that'south not going to to be of much help here. Apple offers various amounts of storage on a subscription footing, there should be something to suit you.  The prices for iCloud storage are as follows:

• 5GB: free
• 50GB: 79p/99c a month
• 200GB: £2.49/$2.99 a month
• 2TB: £half-dozen.99/$nine.99 a month

We should besides mention that Apple has a bundle offering, known as Apple tree One, where you can get iCloud storage as part of a deal that includes Apple Music, Apple TV+ and Apple Arcade. Prices start at £14.95/$14.95 a calendar month. Read Should I get Apple 1? for more information.

If you spend some money on iCloud, and shop your desktop and documents and all your photos at that place, yous can save a huge chunk of storage and an even bigger bonus is the fact that you'll be able to access those files and photos on any Apple tree device you own or by logging onto iCloud with your Apple ID.

Here'due south what you need to exercise to brand space on your Mac past moving files and photos to iCloud:

1. Click on the Store in iCloud option (via Nigh This Mac > Storage > Manage).
2. This opens a window asking you to choose what you desire to shop in iCloud. This tin be all the files on your Mac Desktop and your Documents folder and all your Photos. Select both.
3. Click on Store in iCloud.

If yous want to really cut back on the amount of space taken upwards by your photos nosotros'll talk over some more changes yous tin make below in our reduce photograph library department.

Optimise Storage

Another really easy way to finish your storage getting clogged up on your Mac is to plough on Optimise Storage.

Optimise Storage is Apple's next recommendation after Store in iCloud.

If you lot turn on Optimise Storage it will delete Television receiver shows or films that yous've watched and it one-time email attachments volition be removed. You needn't be agape of losing either of these things because the emails volition all the same be stored on the email server anyhow, and the shows you lot had purchased from Apple tree's iTunes Store can e'er exist downloaded again for free.

To cull this option become to About My Mac > Storage > Manage and click on Optimise Storage.

Once you have chosen this option your storage volition be optimised automatically.

Empty Trash Automatically

We already mentioned emptying the trash as one of the quick ways to get more storage on your Mac.

The easiest way to empty your trash is to right-click on the trash can icon and choose Empty Trash/Empty Bin.

However, you tin can also click on Bin/Trash in the side-bar on the left of your About My Mac > Storage > Manage window and delete information technology there.

It's actually proficient practice to empty your Trash regularly though and Apple tree has a great way to automate this activeness.

If you choose Apple tree's Empty Trash Automatically recommendation it will empty files out of your Trash (or Bin if yous are in the UK) later they have been at that place for 30 days. Here's how to ready it upwardly:

1. Switch this choice on in Almost My Mac > Storage > Manage.
2. Choose the Empty Trash Automatically selection.
3. Click Turn On…
4. Y'all will encounter an warning request if yous're sure you want to erase Trash automatically. It should be pretty condom as 30 days is a long time to realise you lot didn't mean to delete something, so we recommend you click Plough On.

Reduce Ataxia

This is Apple'south final Recommendation constitute in About My Mac > Storage > Manage.

Reduce Clutter will review the content of your Mac and make it piece of cake for you lot to delete files you don't need.

TIP: Rather than open files or documents to see what you are considering deleting, select the file and press the space bar to see a preview.

Click on Review Files and y'all will be taken to a pane that shows tabs for Large Files, Downloads, Unsupported Apps, Containers and a File Browser (depending on which version of macOS y'all have). This is actually the aforementioned view you would see if you lot clicked on Documents in the side-bar on the left.

We don't have any Big Files on our MacBook Pro, just if we did we'd be able to see them here. You can determine whether to delete them or not based on the information provided which includes when you accessed them last and their size.

Next selection is Downloads. Here you'll meet the files you take downloaded from the internet. Every bit with the trash it'south a proficient idea to delete the contents of this folder from time to time equally it is surprising how much space a few downloads can take up.

To delete what's in your Downloads right now select the files you desire to remove and choose Delete. The good thing about deleting Downloads this way is that it won't merely move them to your Trash. If you delete directly from the Downloads folder y'all will demand to Empty Trash too.

If you take whatsoever Unsupported Apps yous will see them in that section. You might see old 32-bit apps hither, for example.

We'll skip Containers as it's unlikely that at that place volition be anything in that view for you lot to delete.

In File Brower you can rapidly access folders for Pictures, Desktop, Music, Movies, Documents and so on.

Those are the steps that Apple offers to help you manage the storage available on your Mac. We'll at present become in to a fleck more detail on some of the other ways to save space, of which there are many.

Reduce your Mac photograph library

If you have a large photo library you might be thinking that you could save some space by deleting the hundreds of blurry or not-so-practiced photos. While there are apps that volition offering to delete duplicate photos on your Mac (such as Photos Duplicate Cleaner or MacPaw'due south Gemini two, the afterward of which offers to remove duplicate files from your Mac.)

However, in that location is a much less try manner to reduce the amount of photos on your Mac: movement them to iCloud.

Nosotros already touched on Photos above, when we mentioned that if yous choose the Store in iCloud option in About This Mac > Storage > Manage y'all tin can choose to shop your photos in iCloud.

The benefit of using iCloud Photo Library is that any photos y'all upload to your Mac in the future also appear on your other devices: iPhone, iPad and so on.

Our Photo library (prior to turning on iCloud Photo Library) was 96GB we started off by paying for the 200GB of infinite Apple tree offers. Months later we had upgraded to the full 2TB as we were storing all our documents, desktop, photos and more than in iCloud.

1. You might have turned on iCloud Photograph Library, merely if you oasis't already y'all could do so in the Photos app. Go to Photos > Preferences.
2. Check the box beside iCloud Photos.
3. This is of import: Select Optimise Mac Storage to brand sure that your full-resolution photos are replaced with low-res versions (you can always download the total-res version if you lot need it).

With that setting your library should eventually shrink equally the high res versions of your images are switched for low-res versions. Merely annotation that you volition also go low res versions of all the images you have on all of your devices, and then it'due south possible that you lot may non save a lot of infinite.

Beware that if yous delete photos from your Mac they will be deleted from iCloud too: iCloud is non a way to back upward your photos so that you lot tin can delete them from your Mac.

If you want to remove your photo library to free up space look at our next suggestion.

Movement photos to external storage

Some other choice is to gratis up infinite on your Mac by moving your photo library to an external hard drive. We have a carve up article that describes how to move your photo library from your Mac to an external drive, simply we'll summarise the steps beneath.

1. Quit Photos.
2. Copy your Photos Library to an external drive. (To save having to delete them again afterwards, printing the Command key when you drag the files over and so that they are moved, with the original files automatically deleted, rather than copied.)
3. One time the files have finished copying, hold down the Option/Alt fundamental while starting up Photos.
4. In Photos select Photos > Preferences and in General choose Utilize as System Photo Library.
5. If you have iCloud Photograph Library enabled, the Mac may become busy equally it works out which photos reside in iCloud, just if should somewhen consummate without requiring a massive data transfer.

Motion your music library

Your Music library (iTunes in older versions of macOS) might be another candidate for re-claiming deejay space, peculiarly if you spent a lot of fourth dimension importing CDs many years ago. If your iTunes library holds a few GB worth of music you have a few options.

Yous tin can copy the whole thing from your Music directory to an external hard drive and point Music/iTunes to information technology from Preferences. That'southward not bad if your Mac is a desktop model, but not ideal if information technology's a notebook - unless y'all have a NAS bulldoze to which you lot connect wirelessly. Nosotros take a split tutorial on how to move your iTunes library to an external hard drive.

Another pick is to pay £21.99/year to subscribe to iTunes Friction match. Here'due south how to gear up iTunes Lucifer. Note: If you accept an Apple Music membership, yous get all of the benefits of iTunes Match, plus access to the entire Apple Music catalogue. So you don't demand both.

Once you've prepare it upward, iTunes Match allows you to access all the music in your music Library on Apple's servers, meaning yous don't have to have it stored locally at all. You'll need to exist connected to the internet in order to play music, but other than that, it'due south but similar using Music/iTunes with locally stored music.

And, as a bonus, if you determine at a later date that yous want to download your music from iTunes Match, you become 256-flake AAC files which are probably of better quality than the ones y'all had stored on your Mac.

The final option hither is to subscribe to Apple tree Music, Apple tree's service that for £9.99 a month gives y'all access to its whole music library, and so bold that all the music you savour is on iTunes you lot can delete all your music from your Mac and just stream the music from Apple Music instead.

If at a after date you make up one's mind non to subscribe anymore, you will ever be able to download for free whatsoever tracks you bought from the iTunes Music Store before you took out the subscription, simply note that unless you take iTunes Match you won't be able to download tracks that you uploaded to your iTunes library yourself, and then don't throw out those CDs simply yet.

Remove unwanted apps

There is an pick in Mac > Storage > Manage to remove unsupported apps, but what about the other apps you accept installed but don't use and don't need?

Deleting apps is pretty simple on a Mac - commonly - and we encompass information technology in detail hither: How to Uninstall Mac Apps.

• You can either delete an app from the Applications binder in the Finder: right-click on the app and chose Move to Bin/Trash.
• Or y'all can press F4 to open up Launchpad, find the app, press Alt/Option and hover over on the app. Click on the x to delete it.

Nonetheless, some macOS apps take preferences (plist) and awarding support files and these can exist in a number of places on your Mac. In those cases the methods above won't delete all the associated files and libraries associated with an app.

If you want to make admittedly sure that every trace of an app is gone then you can try an app that deletes apps thoroughly.

Some major apps include an uninstaller. For instance, you'll detect one of these in the Additional Tools folder of Microsoft Office. Sometimes an app's installer doubles as an uninstaller. Simply the lack of a dedicated uninstaller in macOS is a serious omission.

Fortunately there are a number of third-party options. AppCleaner (costless, download from the Mac App Store here), AppDelete ($7.99) and AppZapper ($12.95) are good options, equally are CleanMyMac 10, Uninstaller and CleanApp.

Another tip is to make sure you quit apps running in the background. Quitting apps that have been open for several days or more, or even restarting your Mac completely on a regular basis, will as well help costless upwardly disk space.

Applications create temporary files to shop data and the longer they run without quitting, the bigger those files become. When you quit the app, the cache files are deleted and the disk space returned.

Remove indistinguishable files

Identifying and dumping duplicate files is some other good fashion of freeing up disk space. Gemini costs £fifteen.95 on the Mac App Shop (in the US you can purchase it on the Mac Store for $xix.99) and allows you to browse your Mac for duplicate files so you can dump one copy.

How much of your precious hard drive space is being taken upwardly by duplicate files? While hard drives may exist getting bigger and cheaper, Apple'due south direction is that of smaller, faster SSD drives. The trouble is that these accept smaller capacities and so a higher level of filing discipline is essential.

There are a number of reasons why you end upwards with and so many dupe files. When you add songs to iTunes, if you have 'Copy files to iTunes Media binder when calculation to library' checked in the preferences, you go along the original. Instant duplication. A couple of thousand high quality songs and that'southward anything up to 10GB difficult drive space wasted. And that doesn't include dupes within iTunes.

If yous use Apple tree Mail, call back that all attachments reside in Mail's ain download folder. This can be another source of duplication.

More generic apps utilize various strategies and criteria to find duplicates and requite you control over which ones to get rid of. Have a await at Tidy Up ($29.99) or Singlemizer (£9.99/$9.99 on the Mac App Store).

Remove extra languages

macOS supports a range of languages, being localised for more than than 25 languages all of which are included automatically during installation. Go to System Preferences > Linguistic communication & Region; hither languages can exist put into preferred order making it easy to switch betwixt them.

Many major applications back up multiple languages too, using the guild from Linguistic communication & Text to select one if the app doesn't support your main language. The problem is that if y'all only want to use one or two languages, macOS and many of your apps are bloated with all the others.

If you desire to delete actress language files that you know you won't be needing, go to the Resources folder and wait for folders ending in .lproj. Each of those folders volition include a language file. You should be able to trash these folders without any problems.

Remove unwanted code

Getting rid of unwanted code is some other disk-saving exercise.

Monolingual (donation requested) lets you remove specific architectures from macOS forth with specific languages. While it can claw back huge swathes of hard drive space, information technology can also render your Mac unbootable if you're not careful. Apply with caution.

Use cloud storage space

Nosotros've discussed iCloud already, but in that location are other cloud storage options.

Deject storage services are great for making files bachelor remotely, simply they can also take up space on your Mac. Both Dropbox and OneDrive, for example, sync everything y'all store in them with your Mac by default - assuming you lot've installed the Dropbox/ OneDrive app.

If you merely have the default 2GB storage available for costless from Dropbox, that'south not too much of a problem. Only Microsoft gives Role 365 subscribers 1TB of space complimentary, and then if y'all utilise that to store lots of files, you could detect yourself running out of deejay space very quickly. The aforementioned is true if you pay for more than space on Dropbox.

In both cases, however, you can cull to sync only files and folders you specify.

In Dropbox, click on the menu bar item, then click the cog and then Preferences. Click the Account tab, then click Change Settings. Now untick the files and folders you don't want to sync with your Mac.

In OneDrive, click the carte bar item, and then Preferences. Click Choose Folders, and then Cull Folders, then Choose Folders to sync. Untick folders, or click the expand arrow to access individual files and untick those.

An alternative would be to sign up for more iCloud storage, as we mentioned earlier.

Archive or backup

You might exist thinking I demand the space, but I don't want to delete annihilation! If you actually are the proverbial data squirrel, hither are a few simple suggestions:

Archive any files y'all're unlikely to need regularly. Ctrl-click on a folder and select the compress pick. (Here'due south more than info on how to zippo Mac files.) The space saved will vary according to the type of file existence archived: JPEGs and DMGs, for instance, are unlikely to shrink very much. In one case created, archives tin can either remain on your Mac or be saved to an external drive.

Finally, if you do accept the decision to delete files or folders, always back them up first.

Source: https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/free-space-mac-3504803/

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