Owning a new Mac is a great feeling â itâs the fastest itâs ever going to be, there are no scratches or dings on the computer, and you have what seems like an unlimited amount of storage space. Fast forward a few months or years, and you may start finding that youâre running out of storage. For those of you with Macs that can be easily upgraded with a new internal drive from OWC, your solution may be to purchase and install a drive with more capacity. But what if you have something like an older MacBook Air with very limited storage â 64GB â that is much more difficult to upgrade? In this article, weâll show some simple ways to free up storage space on your Mac.
- Apps To Free Up Space On Mac
- Free Up Disk Space Mac
- App To Free Up Space On Mac
- Free Up Space Mac Os
Jul 06, 2020 How to Clean Up âOtherâ Storage on Mac. Before deleting, you need to check which category is taking up so much space in Mac storage. For this follow the below steps. Click the Apple icon at the top left of the screen then click on About This Mac and select Storage. Thanks for using the Apple Support Communities. If you are looking to free up some of the space being used by Mail, you may find the information and steps outlined in the following article helpful: Free up storage space for email accounts in Mail on Mac - Apple Support Regards.
How Much Storage Is Being Used?
The first thing youâll want to do is find out how much storage is being used on your Mac, and for what purposes. One way to start looking is to click the Apple menu, then select About This Mac. Click on the Storage tab, and System Information displays how much storage each attached drive contains. Below, you see that I have a lot of space available on my 2 TB Fusion Drive, a 4 TB backup drive thatâs about 2/3 full, and an install disk thatâs wide open.
(The Storage Tab in System Information.)
The first thing youâll want to do is find out how much storage is being used on your Mac, and for what purposes. One way to start looking is to click the Apple menu, then select About This Mac. Click on the Storage tab, and System Information displays how much storage each attached drive contains. Below, you see that I have a lot of space available on my 2 TB Fusion Drive, a 4 TB backup drive thatâs about 2/3 full, and an install disk thatâs wide open.
While hovering your cursor above the various colors and shades listed under each drive capacity shows the type of files taking up space, you may find that some of the labels donât make sense â for example, the red area on the Macintosh HD shows that I have 115.26 GB of iOS files. That sounds like something I may be able to get rid of, but Iâll need to know what theyâre used for.
To get a better idea of how storage space is being used, click the Manage⦠button thatâs located to the right of the drive icon. This initially shows a list of how much space is being used for various things and a set of recommendations like âStore in iCloudâ, âOptimize Storageâ, âEmpty Trash Automaticallyâ, and âReduce Clutterâ. While you can click those recommendation buttons to save some storage space, itâs more instructive to look at the list of apps or files in the left sidebar of this window to see whatâs taking up an unusual amount of space.
(This view shows how much storage is used for specific purposes as seen in the left sidebar.)
As you can see in the screenshot above, iOS Files, Photos, Documents and Parallels VMs (virtual machines) take up the majority of the space on my iMac. Clicking each one of the listed items tells me whatâs actually being stored. In the screenshot below, clicking on iOS Files shows that âdevice backups and software updatesâ are being stored. Sounds like a place where I might be able to clean up some files.
Likewise, clicking on Documents displayed a list of files that are stored in various places on my Mac. I was surprised to find a number of large disk image (.dmg) files in my Downloads folder, all of which were app installers that I could easily delete. https://yellowantique956.weebly.com/blog/mac-software-to-transfer-vcr-to-dvd. Doing so cleared up about 2 GB of storage. Thatâs not much, but if my Mac had only 64 GB of storage like some of the original MacBook Airs, that 2 GB is significant.
iOS Files
Have you owned iOS devices for years? If you ever backed up your iPhone or iPad to your Mac, or used iTunes to search for and install iOS apps, then your Mac is probably using a lot of space to hold old iOS backups and copies of all of your iOS apps.
Have you owned iOS devices for years? If you ever backed up your iPhone or iPad to your Mac, or used iTunes to search for and install iOS apps, then your Mac is probably using a lot of space to hold old iOS backups and copies of all of your iOS apps.
Things have changed in the iOS world. Backups are best done using the iCloud Backup facility thatâs easy to turn on in iOS by tapping launching Settings, then tapping Apple ID > iCloud, and finally scrolling down until you find iCloud Backup listed. Make sure itâs turned on, and your iPhone is backed up to iCloud each and every night over Wi-Fi.
Likewise, the iOS App Store is no longer available on your Mac in iTunes. Do you really need all of those app updates and backups on your Mac when theyâre easily available with a tap on your iPhone or iPad? For me, it was easy to free up 115.26 GB of storage by deleting two iOS files (one for an iPhone named âMesa Verdeâ, the other for an iPad named âCanyonlandsâ). To delete these files, simply move the cursor to the name of the iOS device and an âxâ in a circle â indicating a delete button â appears. Click it, and youâre asked if you wish to remove the file as the removal cannot be undone. https://yellowantique956.weebly.com/blog/omron-hem-790it-software-for-mac. Click the âRemoveâ button that appears and the space is cleared immediately.
Photos
Your Photos Library contains all of the pictures youâve taken and videos that youâve synced with your Mac, so it can be huge. On Macs with limited storage, it may be impossible to store the full Photos Library! Fortunately, thereâs a solution to this dilemma: iCloud Photo Library.
Your Photos Library contains all of the pictures youâve taken and videos that youâve synced with your Mac, so it can be huge. On Macs with limited storage, it may be impossible to store the full Photos Library! Fortunately, thereâs a solution to this dilemma: iCloud Photo Library.
When you enable iCloud Photo Library in the Photos app by selecting Photos > Preferences > iCloud, then checking the iCloud Photo Library checkbox, your entire library is uploaded to iCloud (see screenshot below). This has several benefits: your precious photos and videos are backed up to the cloud, and those photos and videos are accessible from every Apple device you own and through iCloud.com.
(Enabling iCloud Photo Library.)
My Photos Library holds 51,802 photos and 510 videos, yet I can view all of those photos on my iPhone or iPad if I wish â both devices with storage thatâs much more limited than on my Mac. Fortunately, iCloud Photo Library only stores âthumbnailsâ â smaller, lower-resolution versions of the originals â on the devices to optimize storage space on all of my devices. When I wish to look at a full-resolution photo or see a 4K video I shot with my iPhone, itâs downloaded from iCloud to my devices in the best available resolution.
Itâs possible to store your originals in full resolution on your Mac if you have enough space, but choosing to Optimize Mac Storage makes it possible to save a lot of space. That can be very important on laptops with limited storage.
iTunes
Have you ever purchased a movie, TV show or podcast to watch or listen to on your Mac? If so, you may be taking up a lot of storage with those files. Clicking iTunes on the list of storage requirements displays any movies, TV shows or podcasts that are taking up space, and once again they can be deleted by clicking the âxâ in a circle delete button.
Have you ever purchased a movie, TV show or podcast to watch or listen to on your Mac? If so, you may be taking up a lot of storage with those files. Clicking iTunes on the list of storage requirements displays any movies, TV shows or podcasts that are taking up space, and once again they can be deleted by clicking the âxâ in a circle delete button.
Apps To Free Up Space On Mac
Documents
System Information provides three ways of looking at the documents stored on your Mac, all of which may point out files that can be deleted or archived to an external drive. Click on Documents, and youâll see (screenshot below) that it lists Large Files, Downloads, and File Browser.
(Listing Document files by size.)
System Information provides three ways of looking at the documents stored on your Mac, all of which may point out files that can be deleted or archived to an external drive. Click on Documents, and youâll see (screenshot below) that it lists Large Files, Downloads, and File Browser.
Large Files is probably the most useful tab, as it can quickly point out single files that are taking up massive amounts of storage. For example, thereâs one QuickTime movie at the top of my list that chews up a whopping 16.5 GB! Thereâs a reason for that: itâs a high-resolution virtual reality movie I shot.
The Downloads tab shows all items that are in your Downloads folder, and theyâre listed by how long theyâve been in the folder. The list can also be sorted by kind (PNG image, PDF document and so onâ¦), by the date the file was last accessed, and by size. My Downloads folder tends to accumulate PNG images and JPGs for screenshots, and I rarely delete them.
Sadly, System Information only allows one document at a time to be deleted, so if you find that you have hundreds of files to get rid of, open your Downloads folder, highlight all of the files you wish to delete, and then delete them all at once.
What About The System Folder?
The Mac System doesnât take up as much space as it used to, but on occasion, users find that it has grown to the point that itâs taking up entirely too much storage. You may note when you have the System Information window open that it does not show a storage requirement for System â it often just displays the progress âspinning gearâ icon. A better way to see whatâs in the System folder is to use a third-party application like OmniDiskSweeper, which is free to download from The Omni Group.
(This 8.2 GB system folder is typical for a Mac running macOS 10.13 High Sierra.)
The Mac System doesnât take up as much space as it used to, but on occasion, users find that it has grown to the point that itâs taking up entirely too much storage. You may note when you have the System Information window open that it does not show a storage requirement for System â it often just displays the progress âspinning gearâ icon. A better way to see whatâs in the System folder is to use a third-party application like OmniDiskSweeper, which is free to download from The Omni Group.
As you can see in the screenshot above from OmniDiskSweeper, the System folder isnât taking up a lot of space â just 8.2 GB. If your System folder has grown to the point that itâs gigantic, then you probably want to take a look in there with this tool to see whatâs chewing up storage.
Common issues that can cause your System Folder to swell include apps that are writing a lot of log files that are not being deleted, and beta versions of macOS that sometimes cause available space to be incorrectly reported. For the former issue, itâs a good idea to use a utility like the free OnyX to go through and delete log files on a regular schedule. The latter problem can be avoided by not installing beta software on your primary Mac â instead, use a test or virtual machine to try out the beta.
Free Up Disk Space Mac
If you do encounter the âgrowing System Fileâ issue, it may be time to re-install macOS. The best way to do this is to back up everything, then do a clean install. Once your files are restored from your backup, you have an operating system that is as clean as the one youâd get with a new Mac.
App To Free Up Space On Mac
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All Rights Reserved, Copyright 2018, OWC â Since 1988
OWC is on-site wind turbine powered at 8 Galaxy Way, Woodstock, IL 60098 | 1-800-275-4576 | +1-815-338-8685 (International)
All Rights Reserved, Copyright 2018, OWC â Since 1988