How To Free Up Disc Space On Mac

| 16-11-2021
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The Optimised Storage features of your Mac help you save storage space by storing your content in iCloud and making it available on demand:

This article describes several ways to free-up space on your Mac so that you can increase available space on your computer: Related: Mac OS X: What is “other” storage and how to remove. 1.Determine how much disk space you have. Open Disk Utility (Finder Applications Utilities Disk Utility), then click your disk then click info, as. Free Up More Than Enough Disk Space on Your Mac. Are you having problems with a slow Mac? Instead of taking it to a repair shop or throwing it out, take strides to clear up a bit of disk space. You’ll be surprised at the number of duplicate files and applications that are bogging your computer down. Compressing files and folders into an archive that takes up less space is an effective way to free up space on Mac. Generally speaking, a zip file will be about 10% smaller than all of the files were before they were compressed, this feature works best with medium size files.

The most basic way to check free disk space on a Mac is by using Finder. Open a new Finder window by pressing Command+N or selecting File New Finder Window in the menu bar. (You can also use a little-known shortcut to open one from anywhere.) In the window that opens, click on the drive you’d like to check in the sidebar. Powerful Mac video converter can do you a favor on converting and compress videos to MP4 for smaller size. And MacX Video Converter Pro is the one to help you free up disk space on Mac by converting videos to MP4 or other smaller size formats as well as compressing MP4 video file size.

  • When storage space is needed, files, photos, films, email attachments and other files that you rarely use are stored in iCloud automatically.
  • Each file stays exactly where you last saved it, and will be downloaded when you open it.
  • Files that you’ve used recently remain on your Mac, along with optimised versions of your photos.

If you haven't yet upgraded to macOS Sierra or later, find out about other ways to free up storage space.

Find out how much storage is available on your Mac

Choose Apple menu  > About This Mac and then click Storage. Each segment of the bar is an estimate of the storage space used by a category of files. Move your pointer over each segment for more detail.

Click the Manage button to open the Storage Management window, pictured below.

Manage storage on your Mac

The Storage Management window offers recommendations for optimising your storage. If some recommendations have already been turned on, you will see fewer recommendations.

Store in iCloud

Click the Store in iCloud button and then choose from these options:

  • Desktop and Documents. Store all files from these two locations in iCloud Drive. When storage space is needed, only the files you've opened recently will be kept on your Mac, so you can work offline easily. Files stored only in iCloud display a download icon , which you can double-click to download the original file. Learn more about this feature.
  • Photos. Store all original, full-resolution photos and videos in iCloud Photos. When storage space is needed, only space-saving (optimised) versions of photos are kept on your Mac. To download the original photo or video, just open it.
  • Messages. Store all messages and attachments in iCloud. When storage space is needed, only the messages and attachments you recently opened are kept on your Mac. Find out more about Messages in iCloud.

Storing files in iCloud uses the storage space in your iCloud storage plan. If you reach or exceed your iCloud storage limit, you can either buy more iCloud storage or make more iCloud storage available. iCloud storage starts at 50 GB for US$0.99 a month, and you can purchase additional storage directly from your Apple device. Find out more about the prices in your region.

Optimise Storage

Click the Optimise button to save space by automatically removing films and TV programmes you've watched. When storage space is needed, films or TV programmes that you've purchased from Apple and have already watched will be removed from your Mac. Click the download icon next to a film or TV programme to download it again.

Your Mac will also save space by only keeping recent email attachments on this Mac when storage space is needed. You can manually download any attachments at any time by opening the email or attachment, or saving the attachment to your Mac.

Optimising storage for films, TV programmes and email attachments doesn't require iCloud storage space.

Empty Bin Automatically

Empty Bin Automatically permanently deletes files that have been in the Bin for more than 30 days.

Reduce Clutter

Reduce Clutter helps you identify large files and files you may no longer need. Click the Review Files button and then choose any of the file categories in the sidebar, such as Applications, Documents, Music Creation or Bin.

You can delete the files in some categories directly from this window. Other categories show the total storage space used by the files in each app. You can then open the app and decide whether to delete files from within it.

Find out how to re-download apps, music, films, TV programmes and books.


Where to find the settings for each feature

The button for each recommendation in the Storage Management window affects one or more settings in other apps. You can also control these settings directly within each app.

  • If you're using macOS Catalina or later, choose Apple menu  > System Preferences, click Apple ID and then select iCloud in the sidebar: store in iCloud will turn on the Optimise Mac Storage setting on the right. To turn off iCloud Drive entirely, deselect iCloud Drive.
  • If you're using macOS Mojave or earlier, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click iCloud, then click Options next to iCloud Drive. Store in iCloud turns on the Desktop & Documents Folders and Optimise Mac Storage settings.
  • In Photos, choose Photos > Preferences and then click iCloud. Store in iCloud selects iCloud Photos and Optimise Mac Storage.
  • In Messages, choose Messages > Preferences, then click iMessage. Store in iCloud selects Enable Messages in iCloud.
  • If you're using macOS Catalina or later, open the Apple TV app, choose TV > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Files. Optimise Storage selects “Automatically delete watched films and TV programmes”.
  • If you're using macOS Mojave or earlier, open iTunes, choose iTunes > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Advanced. Optimise Storage selects “Automatically delete watched films and TV programmes”.
  • In Mail, choose Mail > Preferences from the menu bar and then click Accounts. In the Account Information section on the right, Optimise Storage sets the Download Attachments menu to either Recent or None.

Empty Bin Automatically: From the Finder, choose Finder > Preferences, then click Advanced. Empty Bin Automatically selects “Remove items from the Bin after 30 days”.

Other ways that macOS automatically helps to save space

With macOS Sierra or later, your Mac will take these additional steps automatically to save storage space:

  • Detects duplicate downloads in Safari, keeping only the most recent version of the download
  • Reminds you to delete used app installers
  • Removes old fonts, languages and dictionaries that aren't being used
  • Clears caches, logs and other unnecessary data when storage space is needed

How to free up storage space manually

Even without using the Optimised Storage features described in this article, you can take other steps to make more storage space available:

  • Music, films and other media can use a lot of storage space. Learn how to delete music, films and TV programmes from your device.
  • Delete other files that you no longer need by moving them to the Bin, then emptying the Bin. The Downloads folder is good place to look for files that you may no longer need.
  • Move files to an external storage device.
  • Compress files.
  • Delete unneeded email: In the Mail app, choose Mailbox > Erase Junk Mail. If you no longer need the email in your Deleted Items mailbox, choose Mailbox > Erase Deleted Items.

Learn more

  • The Storage pane of About This Mac is the best way to determine the amount of storage space available on your Mac. Disk Utility and other apps may display storage categories, such as Not Mounted, VM, Recovery, Other Volumes, Other, Free or Purgeable. Don't rely on these categories to understand how to free up storage space or how much storage space is available for your data.
  • When you duplicate a file on an APFS-formatted volume, that file won't use additional storage space on the volume. Deleting a duplicate file only frees up the space required by any data that you might have added to the duplicate. If you no longer need any copies of the file, you can recover all of the storage space by deleting both the duplicate and the original file.
  • If you're using a pro app and Optimise Mac Storage, find out how to make sure your projects are always on your Mac and that you're able to access their files.
Disc

How To Free Up Disk Space On Mac Yosemite

When the disk on your Mac is almost full, you may receive the above warning message and find that your Mac runs slower than usual. You can then take the easy steps below to check the disk space on your Mac, and may need to use the 10 methods provided in the second part to free up disk space.

Let’s get started.

How To Free Up Disk Space On Macbook Air

How to check disk space on Mac

You can simply follow these steps:

  1. Click the Apple Icon, and select About This Mac.
  2. Click Storage. And you’ll see how much free space is available and what are taking up the used space.

If you are running out of disk space, you can try the methods below to free up some.

How to free up disk space on Mac

Method 1: Use recommendations

A quick fix would be to click the Manage button to use recommendations for optimizing your storage. You’ll see fewer options if some of them are already enabled.

Method 2: Use cloud storage

Besides iCloud and iTunes, you can also use other cloud storage tools to store your content and save disk space on Mac. There’re many cloud storage applications available on the Web or inside the Mac App Store. Among them, you can try AnyTrans.

AnyTrans breaks the sync boundaries and builds highways between all your devices. With it, you can transfer your data and files across iOS devices, Android mobiles, PC/Mac, and cloud storage. Freely, flexibly and unlimitedly.

Method 3: Use external drives

How to free up disk space on microsoft

You can also move big and infrequently used files (e.g. movies, photos and audio) to a USB drive with a large storage capacity, say, 500GB, to effectively free up space on your Mac.

Method 4: Delete downloads

As you may frequently download files from browsers and mail, the Downloads folder is probably taking up several Gigabytes of free space. So you can navigate to the path below to delete downloads that are not needed any more to free up your disk space.

Machintosh HD > Users > Current User > Downloads

Method 5: Clear caches

Caches in apps and browsers can pile up and occupy a good portion of disk space over time. So it’s a good idea to periodically clear caches and free up disk space. To do so, you can:

  1. In the menu bar, click Finder, then select Go.
  2. Click Go to Folder.
  3. Type ~/Library/Caches.
  4. Delete the files or folders that’re taking up the most space.
  5. Type /Library/Caches.
  6. Again, delete large folders/files.

Method 6: Remove logs

In the Library folder, you can also find the Logs folder, which stores some temporary files of the system, apps and mobile devices. You can remove unnecessary files/logs in it to free up space.

Method 7: Delete iTunes backups

If you often back up your iPhone with iTunes, the backups may take up much space on your Mac. To have a check, you can go to iTunes > Preferences > Devices.

You can then move the content to the cloud, then delete all previous backups on your Mac.

Method 8: Remove duplicate files

In iTunes, there’re other files you can remove to free up disk space — duplicate items.

  1. Open iTunes.
  2. Click the View tab, then select Show Duplicate Items.
    iTunes will show you a list of duplicates. You can then check and remove the unneeded.

Method 9: Remove software updates

If you have updated your iPhone or iPad via iTunes on your Mac, you’ve left update file(s) on the system. After the update, these files are not needed any more, and you can follow these steps to delete them.

How To Free Up Disk Space On Mac

  1. Click the Finder tab > Go > Go to Folder.
  2. To delete iPad update files, type ~/Library/iTunes/iPad Software Updates.
  3. To delete iPhone update files, type ~/Library/iTunes/iPhone Software Updates.

Method 10: Uninstall unneeded apps

Last but not least, you can consider removing unused applications on your Mac. It’s a great way to free up disk space.

You can use the free OS X tool AppCleaner or AppTrap to clean uninstall apps. Just drag and drop the app you want uninstalled into the tool.

How To Free Up Disk Space On Mac Computer

Then select the files you want to be removed along with the app, and empty the trash and the uninstallation process is complete.

Just have a try now!

How To Free Up Disk Space On Mac For Imovie

Feel free to leave a comment below to share your results or any other suggestions.