What is taking up space on my Mac?
- Check Disk Space Mac
- Clean Up Mac Disk Space
- Free Up Space In Mac
- Mac Os X Disk Utility
- Mac Os X Free Up Disk Space
There comes a time in every computer's life when it is full of files and programs, slowing it down so much that its owner searches for an article such as this in order to cure it of these ailments (before it gets thrown out the window!).
GrandPerspective (Free) is very similar to Disk Inventory X, but not quite up to par. The interface also feels a little old, combining some of the new styles of OS X 10.5+ and some of the old ones.
Worry not, you're in the right place. This article will take you through 8 steps which will free up space on your Mac - removing unneeded files and clearing space for the stuff you actually need.
- 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. 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.
- I realized that I needed to clean up my computer and free up disk space. In this article, I explain what I did to increase available disk space on my Mac. Following these tips will help your free up a lot of space on your Mac running macOS Sierra (or OS X). Please also note that freeing up space will likely increase your Mac's performance.
- Empty The Trash. The most obvious and easy way to free up some space is to empty the Trash.
- Now mac has only one partition which is the startup volume. The problem is the previous partition created a free space upon removing it and it is not allocated to anyone, now when I try to delete the free space, Disk.
No matter if you're tech savvy or not, anyone can use these tips to breathe new life into their Mac.
To find out how much space is available on your Mac:
- Open the Apple menu (the Apple icon in the top-left corner of your screen).
- Click 'About this Mac'.
- Click 'Storage'.
This overview will show what categories are taking up the most space, as well as how much space is available on your Mac.
The 8 sections below address the biggest culprits of space-hogging on your Mac and how to clean them up.
Jump straight to:
1. Mac OS Storage Management
The first port of call when making space on your Mac is to see what tools your Mac offers you for such a task.
If your Mac is running macOS Sierra or later, it has great built-in tools for managing files and optimizing storage. To access these tools, click the apple icon in the top-left corner of your screen > About this Mac > Storage > Manage…
As you can see this is also how to check storage on Mac. The tool shows a breakdown of the storage space taken up on your Mac by media such as Apps, Books, Photos and others.
Let's have a look at each tool to see how it can help:
- Store in iCloud: Quickly store files (Documents, Photos and Messages) from your Mac in iCloud. When considering how to clear space on Mac, getting rid of files quickly springs to mind- However, if you need to keep the files, you can just move them to an external hard drive, or into iCloud!
Enabling this option will allow your Mac to automatically save space when it's needed.
This is great as you'll be able to access your files on any device using your Apple ID. However, if you have a large number of files, you'll need to purchase more storage space than your allotted free amount (5GB)- obviously, depending on the amount of space you need, this can quickly become an expensive option.
- Optimize Storage: For those who download and watch lots of movies and TV, this option can save you a lot of space and a lot of time. Enabling this option will allow your Mac to automatically remove such files (which can be HUGE depending on their length and quality) once you have watched them.
Empty Trash Automatically: Similar to the above, enabling this option allows the automatic removal of files, saving you time and space without having to keep on top of it manually. This will remove items in your Trash after 30 days of them being there. Be aware that once files have been removed from your Trash, you will not be able to retrieve them.
Side note: Many points in this article will advise the removal of unwanted files from your Mac. However, these files are not completely removed from your computer until you empty the Trash (the space is not regained until they are removed from Trash). You can manually empty it by clicking the Trash Can icon in your dock, then clicking 'Empty'.
Reduce Clutter: Find large and unused files on your Mac and delete them from your system. You'll need to delete them manually, but it's well worth it if you can remove files that you do not use.
Navigate to files that you don't need using the 'Large Files' or 'Downloads' sorters, then hit 'Delete.'. Note that this action will bypass sending the item to Trash, so it's permanent.
If you're finding unwanted files using the 'File Browser' tab, you'll need to right-click > 'Move To Trash'.
2. Find Duplicate Files Mac
The quickest way to free up space on your Mac is to automatically remove files that you don't need. Without realizing it, you can accumulate gigabytes worth of duplicate files and folders on your computer.
The problem is that it can take so much time to find and delete these duplicates that people do not bother to do it even if they want to.
Luckily, you can use an app like Duplicate Sweeper to do this for you.
Duplicate Sweeper: Easily scan your Mac for duplicate files and photos. You can then select and remove duplicates based on your preferences. In this way you can keep your newest version of files and remove all duplicates with a click of a button.
In the example below, I was able to remove over 6000 files with one-click. This freed up 2.3 GB of space on my MacBook. Imagine manually going through and comparing 6000 files without Duplicate Sweeper. it would have taken forever!
For more information about Duplicate Sweeper, or to download the free trial:
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3. Unused Apps- Uninstall Programs on Mac
One of the biggest areas you should consider when looking at how to free up space on Mac is your Apps. Maybe unsurprisingly, apps on your Mac can be some of the largest files on your computer. Removing apps that you don't use can free up a huge amount of space. Let's list your apps by their files size:
Open Finder, then open the Applications section. Display the items as a list (using the button with 4 horizontal lines), then click the ‘Size' header to reorder your applications by size. You can then work down the list and decide which applications you don't use. Simply drag an application from the list into the Trash Can on your Dock to remove them.
Remember that you'll need to empty your Trash Can to completely remove the applications from your Mac.
4. Clean up media and downloads
The quality of media like photo and video is constantly improving. Unfortunately, this usually means that the corresponding files are bigger than they used to be.
For this reason, your saved media could be a great place to free up some of that precious storage on your Mac.
Open Finder and look through your Pictures, Movies and Music folders. If there is media there that you don't want, select it and move it to Trash to get rid of later. If you prefer to delete this media from the associated apps like Photos and iMovie, see how to empty their trash.
It is also recommended to check your Downloads file for unwanted files too.
This folder can receive copious amounts of files downloaded from multiple sources. Many of these files you may have only needed to read or use once.
Best clean my mac apps. You can get to your Downloads folder by opening a Finder window and clicking the 'Downloads' header.
Again, select whatever files you don't need, then right-click > Move to Trash/Bin.
Extra: Zipped / Archived files
Ringmaster casino no deposit bonus. If you receive a zipped file (with the .zip extension), opening it will unzip the file or folder and create the files in a non-zipped form.
This will create files that you can use, but it will not remove the (now unneeded) zip file. If you've already unzipped, you can delete the .zip file.
On the flip side, you can use file archiving to compress files or folders that you don't use regularly.
Say you have a folder of documents that you only need to save for safekeeping; right-click the folder in Finder and click 'Compress [file/folder name]'. This will compress the files and create a .zip file.
Don't forget to delete the original, uncompressed folder in order to save the space!
5. Delete iTunes backups
Depending on the number of files, photos, messages etc that you have stored on your iPhone, iPod or iPad, it's backup on your Mac can be huge.
Keeping backups of your devices is a good idea. If something was to happen to your device, your data can be restored to it (or another device) using your backup. However, these backup files can be massive, and you may never need them! For this reason, consider backing up your devices to iCloud instead – freeing up space on your Mac.
To set your device to backup to iCloud, go to Settings > (your name) > iCloud > iCloud Backup.
To initiate a backup, connect your device to a power source and also to a Wi-Fi network. Lastly, ensure that your device screen is locked and that you have enough free space in iCloud to store the backup.
How to delete backups on Mac - You can also delete the backups which you already have stored on your Mac. To do this, open iTunes and go to iTunes > Preferences > Devices. If you don't need the backups in the list, select and delete them!
Find out: where are iTunes backups stored?
Alternatively, if you don't want to use iCloud for backing up your data, or if you only need certain data from your backups, you could use iBackup Extractor. This handy tool allows you to access and browse your backups, and extract any important photos, messages etc. that you need. You can save this data to your computer, then delete the backup from iTunes as seen above!
6. How to Delete Temporary Files on Mac
Some of the most common questions asked are 'how to clear cache on mac' and 'how to delete cookies on mac'. Well, let's answer those for you!
Temporary and cache are files that are stored locally in order to speed up processes. For example, images from a website that you visited can be cached, so that when you visit the page again, you don't have to wait to download the images again, they are simply pulled in from the cache. That's great for processes that you use regularly, but without care, your temporary and cached files can build up and eat away at your Mac's performance.
Let's see how to clear cache on mac – Open Finder > Go > hold ‘option' and click ‘Library' > Caches. Select and delete any cache files and folders that you don't need to save space!
7. Taking out the Trash
Deleting files on your Mac usually only moves them to your Trash Can (or Bin).
This is great, because if you 'delete' something by accident, you can restore it to its original location - no harm done.
However, if you are culling files on your Mac to make space, you may wonder why you are not gaining storage after clicking delete.
To permanently delete files from the Mac, you'll need to empty your Trash Can. To do this, simply click the Trash Can (or Bin) icon in your Dock.
Here, you can review or restore files in your Trash/Bin.
To permanently delete all the files in your bin, click Empty. You'll be asked if you're sure, and to confirm the permanent deletion of the files.
Deleting files from Photos, iMovie and Mail apps.
Generally, you'll be able to use the steps above to permanently delete files. However, some apps have their own way to manage 'deleted' files.
As such, you'll need to empty trash cans in individual apps to ensure that files are fully deleted.
An example of this can be seen in the Photos app:
Click the 'Recently Deleted' header to access the trash in the Photos app.
After 'deleting' photos from the app, the files can remain in this section for up to 40 days before being automatically deleted.
If you are sure you'd like to permanently delete these photos, click 'Delete All' to remove them from your hard drive.
You can use similar steps to empty trash for other apps like iMovie and Mail.
8. Move files into external storage
The majority of the methods above cover how to delete unwanted files to gain space. But what you if want to keep your files?
If you need more space on your Mac, but deleting your files is not an option, you may want to consider investing in external storage.
You can purchase external storage drives pretty cheap nowadays.
The way this works is that you connect your external drive with your Mac via USB cable. The drive then pops up as a Location on your Mac:
You can then drag files from your Mac onto your external drive, or cut/paste them into specific folders on your drive.
Takeaways
These are the most effective steps to make the most of the available space on your Mac in our experience.
There's a lot of information above, but this is not an exhaustive list of everything you can do to clear space on your Mac. We hope that you now have the tools that you need to breathe new life into your Mac or MacBook.
Happy spring cleaning!
/Mac Cleaner /How Much Space Does macOS Take - Check & Free up System Storage
Are you curious about how much space does MacOS take? Let's get a closer look at MacOS High Sierra in this new article! Read along.
Apple macOS 10.14 Mojave was released to the public on September 24, 2018, and you may want to know how much space does macOS Mojave takes. New versions of macOS bring new features and designs that can improve the user experience. However, you must note that it takes a lot of space on your device to run successfully.
You cannot download the update unless you have freed some space enough for it. Today we will learn how much space does Mac OS take and what are the best practices to improve the device performance.
How Much Space Does macOS High Sierra Take?
In order to run High Sierra on Mac, you will need at least 8 GB of available disk space. Once you do the upgrade to macOS High Sierra, you'll get more free disk space because of the new Apple File System and HEVC which is a new encoding standard for videos.
Article GuidePart 1. How Much Space Does MacOS High Sierra Take?Part 2. How to Get More Space on Mac?Part 3. How to Upgrade to Mac OS High Sierra?Part 4. Summary
There's a lot of information above, but this is not an exhaustive list of everything you can do to clear space on your Mac. We hope that you now have the tools that you need to breathe new life into your Mac or MacBook.
Happy spring cleaning!
/Mac Cleaner /How Much Space Does macOS Take - Check & Free up System Storage
Are you curious about how much space does MacOS take? Let's get a closer look at MacOS High Sierra in this new article! Read along.
Apple macOS 10.14 Mojave was released to the public on September 24, 2018, and you may want to know how much space does macOS Mojave takes. New versions of macOS bring new features and designs that can improve the user experience. However, you must note that it takes a lot of space on your device to run successfully.
You cannot download the update unless you have freed some space enough for it. Today we will learn how much space does Mac OS take and what are the best practices to improve the device performance.
How Much Space Does macOS High Sierra Take?
In order to run High Sierra on Mac, you will need at least 8 GB of available disk space. Once you do the upgrade to macOS High Sierra, you'll get more free disk space because of the new Apple File System and HEVC which is a new encoding standard for videos.
Article GuidePart 1. How Much Space Does MacOS High Sierra Take?Part 2. How to Get More Space on Mac?Part 3. How to Upgrade to Mac OS High Sierra?Part 4. Summary
Part 1. How Much Space Does MacOS High Sierra Take?
If your Mac has been running on macOS 10.12 well it should also run smoothly with macOS 10.13 High Sierra without any issues at all. All Mac models and devices from 2009 like Mac Book, iMac, and Mac Book Retina and 2010 models such as Mac Mini, Mac Pro, Mac Book Air, and Mac Book Pro are compatible with the MacOS High Sierra.
However, if you are unsure which mac os version you're using, you can find it by going to the device information of your Mac, to do this, open the Apple menu and click on ‘About this Mac'.
How much disk space does macOS use? In order to run High Sierra on your Mac, you will need at least 8 GB of available disk space. I know this space is a lot but once you did the upgrade to macOS High Sierra, you'll get more free space because of the new Apple File System and HEVC which is a new encoding standard for videos.
Tip: Here recommend a powerful tool named iMyMac PowerMyMac to remove the purgeable space on Mac so that you will have more space to upgrade the macOS High Sierra. Just have a free trial below to save more space now!
By these two newly added features your photos, videos, apps, and other files will consume less space on your Mac. Sound cool? Start the upgrade now.
Part 2. How to Get More Space on Mac?
After knowing how much space does macOS Catalina take, you should get more space on Mac to run macOS. Mac system taking up 300GB? Too much space! How many GB should system take up on Mac? How much storage does Mac have this time? If your Mac is running slowly does not have enough space to accommodate the new macOS then you may see 'Your startup disk is almost full' on your screen. It could be clogged with junk files and unimportant files.
The longer we use our devices, the more unneeded and unimportant files we store in it that later on can cause slow performance. Some even affect the way the device boots up because they have a login and startup files included. Especially files in the Other, if you want to know what is Other in Mac storage, just check the provided link.
The best thing to do is to remove these unneeded files permanently so you can get a faster Mac plus more space for the new MacOS update. However, deleting them manually may take time so better use an automatic program to remove the junk files with ease.
There are programs to clean up Mac that can easily erase these junks without too many steps involved. https://softwaredream.mystrikingly.com/blog/ios-phone-emulator-for-windows. Just like PowerMyMac, offered by iMyMac. It is a powerful program that eliminates all the clutters that affects the performance of the device.
This is an effective and efficient software solution to erase junks, clear browser and system caches, and more. How can PowerMyMac help you in cleaning up the junks from your Mac? First, you need to download PowerMyMac and install it on your Mac.
Next, follow these steps on how to clear system storage on macOS High Sierra effectively use this program.
- Once you have successfully installed PowerMyMac, click on Master Scan among the options from the left panel
- Click the Scan button and wait until the software completes the scanning
- After the scanning, review all the results and carefully select the junk files you wish to remove
- Click on the ‘Clean' button
- Cleanup is completed
You may also use other options such as Duplicate Finder and Large & Old Files. These two will also help you free up some space on your Mac and be able to upgrade to the latest Mac OS.
PowerMyMac also helps you scan and analyze the network status of your device. The next time you will experience, latency or apps slowing down, use PowerMyMac to check and determine what is really going on with your device.
Tip: Speaking to apps, you may want to remove some unneeded apps on your Mac to save more space. Here we recommend another tool named PowerMyMac Uninstaller to help you. You can check how it works when uninstalling Anaconda on Mac.
Your Mac has now plenty of space needed to accommodate the new Mac OS. Simply follow the instructions given by Apple on how to proceed with the update or you can follow these steps below.
Part 3. How to Upgrade to Mac OS High Sierra?
Do Mac Updates take up space? Yes it does. But just some, you need to upgrade to the newer version for better Mac performance. Now that you are ready with the upgrade, first create a backup just to make sure your important files are safe and secured.
Check Disk Space Mac
Time Machine Backups
Setup your Time Machine so that you can easily create a backup with an external drive. How much is photoshop for mac.
Clean Up Mac Disk Space
- Get an external drive to be used for Time Machine backup
- Upon connecting, you will be asked if you want to use the drive and create a backup via Time Machine. Choose Use Backup Disk
- Choose your external drive on the list
- You can check the ‘Backup Automatically' if needed
- Wait until the backup is finished
Remember that the first time you backup using Time Machine will take a long time to complete. This is normal though. However, after a series of backups, Time Machine will only backup the files that were changed and added for faster process later on.
Download New Mac OS
Right after making sure that you have your own backup, you can download the new Mac OS through the App Store.
- Go to the App Store on your Mac
- Go directly to the MacOS High Sierra page or you can search for it
- Click the download button
- Once the download is completed, it automatically installs the new OS
- Simply follow the onscreen instructions to finish the upgrade
Remember that during the upgrade, the device will keep on restarting several times, this is normal and some activities might be slow until the upgrade is finished. When the upgrade is fully completed, you may now continue where you left.
Part 4. Summary
Now that you are aware of how much space does Mac OS take, you can be ready at any time there is a new upgrade released. Of course, don't forget to clean up your entire system and free it from junks and clutters that are often the suspects of space-hogging.
Free Up Space In Mac
Use iMyMac PowerMyMac to save you from all the hassles of manual deletion. When the latest MacOS Mojave comes out sooner, for sure you are among the firsts to download and try! Share this with your friends and let them know!
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Gerrit2020-01-27 08:36:54
Hi I am thinking of buying a Macbook Air due to my budget but can only afford the 128GB SSD 2017 model. I see it has a SD card slot can I use the transcend SD card and format it in a way so I can install apps or software on it? I do have a home PC so this will be my on the Go device.
Stella2019-11-22 10:00:18
Have saved about more 8GB storage, yeyeyeyye!
Edith2019-06-03 08:49:08
After using 2 years, my system is taking up so much space and that really confuses me, now I know how to get more space on my Mac, thanks!
Clean up and speed up your Mac with ease
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