How Do You Free Up Disk Space On Mac

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How To Free Disk Space On Mac

/PowerMyMac /How Do I Free Up Disk Space on My Mac?

Clean up Storage Space of Mac Mail. Once you see the space utilized by the Mac mail app on your hard disk, you can clean those out. There are a couple of solutions to clean up the Mac mail storage space. You have to be very cautious when you delete the email client files. It may break your system email client or lose your data. To check what’s taking up space on your mac, you can choose “Manage” on the startup disk warning notification. If you’re ahead of the curve and trying to clean up your Mac before being warned, you can access the management screen by going to About This Mac from the Apple menu (top left of your screen), and then choosing Storage. Items you put in the trash stay there, taking up space until you empty the trash. Right-click on the trash icon and select Empty Trash. Some applications, such as iPhoto ®, iMovie ®, and Mail have their own trash cans, be sure to empty those as well by going into each program and selecting Empty Trash. If you need more space — whether it’s to upgrade to the new Mac OS Catalina or to download more apps — we’re here to help you out. With Apple’s recent Mac mo. Nov 20, 2020 To free up disk space, it’s helpful to know exactly what is using disk space on your Mac. A hard disk analysis tool like Disk Inventory X will scan your Mac’s hard disk and display which folders and files are using up the most space. You can then delete these space hogs to free up space.

Disk space is the space that we place all of our information, pretty much your programs, apps, user preferences, documents, videos, music, and so much more. At present, the Mac still has a limited hard drive that can be filled up easily. In case you fail to efficiently clean your hard drive, you will sooner or later receive the “Your disk is almost full” error. So how to clear disk space on Mac?

Although you can free up space by removing files and elements that you have downloaded, it will not get you far. Remember that majority of the space on your Mac can be freed up by clearing temporary files, language files, attachments, duplicate files, or emptying the content of the Trash cans.

Here are a variety of ways on how to free up disk space on Mac, just keep on reading to learn more.

Article GuidePart 1. How Do I Free Up Disk Space on Mac? (Quickest Way)Part 2. How Do I Clear Storage on My Mac When the Disk is Full?Let's Wrap It Up

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Part 1. How Do I Free Up Disk Space on Mac? (Quickest Way)

So, how do I free up disk space on my Mac to make it run faster? There are quite a few ways to really clear out your disk space, and all of them can be quite a bit of trouble or time-consuming.

iMyMac PowerMyMac has a variety of tools that you can use to free up disk space on your Mac. The software is dependable and highly-efficient. It also boasts an array of tools to help clean unwanted files as well as optimize your Mac. Let us take a close look at some of the tools that you can use to free up disk space on your device. How Do You Free Up Disk Space On Mac

Master Scan. This tool is used to clean up the system junks on your Mac such as the System Cache, System Logs, Application Cache, User Logs, Localization and more to optimize overall performance while also cleaning up unwanted files to free up disk space. It reduces the size of your photo library on your Mac by cleaning up the photo cache. If you want to delete local copies of your email attachments and downloads that were saved in the disk space, this is a must-have tool.
Large & Old Files. With this tool, it helps you find files that occupy a certain disk space or any outdated files that eat up precious disk space.
Uninstaller. This tool is used to easily remove entire applications on your device especially those that you seldom use.

Duplicate Finder. This function allows you to erase files forever so that you can protect your personal privacy.
Similar Image Finder. This tool functions as a photo manager that helps find and clean similar photos on your device.

How to Free Up Disk Space on Mac with PowerMyMac?

Let's take Master Scan as an example, follow the simple steps below to clean up your Mac for freeing space with PowerMyMac:

Free download PowerMyMac, install and launch it on your Mac.
Select Master Scan module.
Begin to scan your Mac to look for junk files.
View and choose the files you want to delete.
Press the Clean button to remove your unwanted files.

Part 2. How Do I Clear Storage on My Mac When the Disk is Full?

Since you have been asking – how to clear disk space on Mac? Let us now take a close look at some of these methods to clear up space on your device. If you don't want to do these manually, all of them can be done easily by PowerMyMac.

1. Remove Duplicate or Similar Files

Duplicate or similar files are notorious for eating up most of your hard drive space. One of the initial tasks that you should focus on is to remove these files, especially if you have been using your computer for a long time.

2. Empty the Trash Cans

The Trash on your device is the equivalent to the Recycle Bin on Windows. Instead of deleting files permanently from within the Finder, they are moved to the Trash so you have the option to restore them later in case you change your mind. If you want to completely remove these files to free up space, you must empty your Trash. Since Macs have several trash cans, you must empty several.

How to clear disk space on Mac by emptying the main Trash? Simply CTRL+click or right-click on the Trash icon that you can find at the right bottom corner of the dock and select Empty Trash. This action will delete all the files you sent to the Trash from the Finder. Remember that iMovie, iPhoto, and Mail have separate trash cans. In case you have deleted media files from these applications, you must empty their trash cans.

3. Uninstall Unused Applications

How to clear disk space on Mac by removing unused apps? Generally, all applications that you installed on your Mac can take up space. It is recommended to uninstall those that you no longer need:

Simply open a Finder window and choose Applications in the sidebar.
Once you find the icon of the application, drag-and-drop to the Trash on your dock.

Remember that some of these applications might be eating up a lot of space. To distinguish which applications are taking up most space:

Open a Finder window and choose Applications.
Tap on “Show items in a list” knob on the toolbar.
Tap on the Size heading to categorize the installed applications based on size.

4. Remove Any Downloads

Some have downloaded files from messengers, web browsers and mail. If you download files from the Internet, you can find them in the Downloads folder.

Generally, it is found in this location:

/Macintosh HD/Users/Current User/Downloads

Based on statistics, an average Mac user can end up with 0.5 GB weekly in the Downloads folder. In most cases, all files in the Downloads folder are left in disarray and eat up precious disk space. It is recommended to sort out the files based on size, date or kind to sift out the unnecessary ones from those that you still need.

5. Clearing the Cache

The cache file is a temporary data file created by browsers, applications, and other programs to allow your Mac to function faster. When cache files are removed, they are recreated once an application is used again. Nevertheless, you might not be using some applications and their leftovers are still in the Cache folder which occupies a lot of disk space. This is the reason why it is recommended to regularly clear the cache.

The cache files are typically stored in the Library folders that you can find in the following locations:

/Library/Caches
~/Library/Caches

In the /Library/Caches, you will find temporary files produced by the system. Generally, these files will not take up too much space. Nevertheless, in the ~/Library/Caches folder, it stores many junk files that are produced when running applications. As a result, this folder increases in size over time.

How to clear disk space on Mac by clearing the caches? Generally, the Library folder is hidden on macOS as Apple. You can access it with these steps.

How Do You Free Up Disk Space On Macbook Air

Open the Finder window
On the Menu, tap on Go > Go to Folder
In the dialog box, key in ~/Library/Cache and tap on Go

6. Remove Language Files

The applications in Mac include language files for every language being supported. You have the option to switch the system language of your Mac and start using the apps in that specified language right away. Nevertheless, most are likely to use one language, thus the language files only take up space.

7. Remove Old iPhone Backups

For those who often sync their iPhone with iTunes, the application produces several backup copies on your device. Over time, these files can eat up precious disk space since they usually include music, movies and other large files. You can find these old backup copies by opening iTunes > Go to the Menu Bar > iTunes > Preferences.

You will see a list of all the backups that iTunes managed to produce while working with your device. Once you made up your mind that they are no longer need, you can safely remove them but make sure they are in iCloud.

An alternative approach in finding and removing iOS backups is to go to:

~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup

8. Cleaning up Large Mail Attachments

If you are using the Mail application in macOS with the same email account for a long time, there is a high chance that large email attachments are taking up a large chunk of space on your drive.

The initial step is to change the Mail settings to not download any attachments automatically to help save space or perform a cleanup task to eliminate them. For those who are using Gmail, you can designate limits on the number of messages synced over IMAP by default to only display the last few thousands instead of everything.

Go to Mail > Preferences > Accounts > Account Information.
Change the drop-down for “Download attachments” to either “Non” or “Recent”.

Altering this setting will allow the Mail app to not use up any more space but this will not deal with the issue of attachments from emails that were already been downloaded.

How do I free up disk space on my Mac by removing these attachments? Just do it manually with the following steps.

Open Mail and tap on the folder that you want to find and remove any attachments.
Utilize the Sort by Size option to find large-sized messages
Tap on the Message and select Message > Remove attachments from the menu bar. Remember that this will not remove the attachment from the mail server if you are using IMAP.
Repeat these steps on all messages that you want to delete attachments from.

9. Clean up Photos

Obviously, if you have a lot of photos on your device, they eat up most of your disk space. Essentially, you can choose those that you can remove such as duplicates or copies are photos mistakenly taken.

Once you have deleted the unwanted photos, the next step is to eliminate the files that your system created. In Photos, it is the cache files while for iPhoto, it is the service copies. Understandably, both are difficult to find but there are ways to do so.

The Photos cache includes the iCloud local copies, Faces cache and other elements related to your apps. How to clear disk space on Mac by deleting photos? For macOS versions earlier than Sierra, simply follow these steps:

Open Finder and proceed to your Photos library
CTRL+click your Photos library and choose the “Show Package Contents” option
Access “resources” and proceed to “model resource”

At this point, you will see several folders in the Finder window. The Photos cache rests in these folders, but it can be tricky which ones are safe to remove and what is not. Remember that removing the wrong file can disrupt the overall performance of Photos.

For those who are still using iPhoto, you must find the service copies it produces every time an image is altered. If you are going to work on this task, simply repeat steps 1 and 2 above. Go through the Master, Modified, Original and Preview folders to decide on which photos have original copies that were altered.

Let's Wrap It Up

With the help of these methods obove, you have answers on 'how to clear disk space on Mac' now, and you will gain free space for other important uses. Regular cleanup of any unwanted files or elements will free up space on your Mac as well as fix the “Startup Disk is Full” error.

Although you can clean up your device manually, it generally takes time. With the help of the highly-efficient tools byiMyMac PowerMyMac, you can save time while ensuring that your Mac functions optimally. Feel free to have its free trial below!

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What's taking up space

Have you ever seen this pop up on your Mac?

It’s frustrating! This occurs because the memory your Mac has is full. It may be saved movies, large documents, mail attachments, or just plain cached items from apps like iMessage that are taking up space on your Mac.

Not only is the popup message annoying, diminished disk space on your Mac can prevent you from being productive. Mail attachments or other files may not save to your Mac, all because you’ve got a bunch of old stuff cluttering your memory system. It can even cause apps to quit, or fail to load.

Low disk space isn’t always an 'old Mac' problem, either. While it’s true older Macs typically have less memory available to them, even modern Macs can get cluttered. That’s why it’s important to know how to clear space on Mac hard drives.

How to check storage on Mac

Here’s how to check the storage on your Mac using Apple’s method:

From the menu bar on your Mac, click the Apple logo on the top left
Select 'About this Mac'
Select the 'Storage' option in the new window

This is a basic way to check how much storage is being occupied on your Mac. Another good tip is to check your disk usage with iStat Menus. It’s an app that allows you to monitor – in real time – how your Mac is performing. iStat Menus lives in your Mac’s menu bar, running in the background until you need it. Each of its monitoring services has a menu bar icon, including one for memory.

When you click on the iStat Menus icon, it shows you exactly what’s happening with your disk space. When your Mac is running slowly, it’s possible an app is taking up more resources than you would like. iStat Menus shows you which app is to blame.

How to optimize storage using macOS

If you’re using macOS Sierra or later, you can benefit from Apple’s Optimize Storage functionality. It allows you to store files in iCloud, renewing your access to these files whenever you need. Here’s how to use the Apple way of managing storage on Mac:

Repeat the steps above to check the available and used storage on your Mac
Click on 'Manage' to access the storage management window
Enable the 'Empty Trash Automatically' and 'Reduce Clutter' options to remove files you deleted, and large files you might no longer need.
Select 'Store in iCloud' to move your desktop file and docs, photos, and messages to iCloud. You can choose what file types to transfer.

Go to the Optimize Storage menu and choose from three options that help you use storage more cleverly. You can select to remove watched files from your Apple TV app (or iTunes if you use macOS Mojave and earlier), download only recent attachments, or not to delete attachments at all. Also, read an article about how to clear scratch disk.

Move Files to the Cloud

iCloud is Apple’s preferred method for storing files and folders in the cloud. It makes your data available across devices, and is now the default service for system backups.

Apple gives you 5GB free iCloud storage, but it’s just enough for an iPhone backup and a few gigabytes of pictures. It’s almost never enough for the average user.

Activating it on your Mac will help save room in your system memory, though. It moves the actual storage of files to the cloud, and ann image of those files on your Mac. It also compresses images for optimized storage on the Mac, but keeps them available in the Photos app.

If you have a different cloud storage system you prefer, CloudMounter makes it easy to back your Mac’s files up to Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Mega, Amazon S3, and other services. It lives in your Mac’s Finder app and menu bar, and makes moving files from your Mac to the cloud as easy as dragging and dropping them into CloudMounter, and directly into your connected cloud account.

Manage large files and archive data

You can find and delete large files on your Mac directly. Here’s how:

From the menu bar on your Mac, click the Apple logo on the top left
Select 'About this Mac'
Select the 'Storage' option in the new window
Select 'Manage'
Select 'Documents'
On the right side of the window, click the 'Size' column header to show the largest files first

We prefer using CleanMyMac X’s file system manager. Here’s how to use it:

Open CleanMyMac X on your Mac
Select the 'Large & Old Files' module on the right side of the window
Select 'Scan'

This is a smarter way of discerning which files are taking up space on your Mac – especially if you don’t need access to those files often. It shows you which types of files they are, how old they are, and lets you delete batches of files by size.

Find and delete duplicate files

When you download an app, it usually has associated files it stores on your Mac. That’s normal; duplicates of those files aren’t. Downloading an app more than once, or even updating an app, can cause it to duplicate existing files on your Mac.

You may also download files more than once. Your Mac is smart, but doesn’t bother checking to see if you already have a file before downloading it again. There’s no clean way to check for duplicates on your Mac. Apple would ask that you look for duplicated filenames in your storage, and delete one of them.

A better way is to use Gemini, an innovative cleanup app built to help you find and eliminate duplicate files on your hard drive. Even better, it can identify near-identical files as well, giving you an easy way to delete the slightly shaky versions of your vacation snaps in one convenient window.

Here’s how to detect and delete duplicate files with Gemini:

Open Gemini on your Mac
Click the ‘plus’ icon, or drag a folder to the app
Select 'Review Results' to delete files manually, or 'Smart Cleanup' to allow Gemini to delete all duplicates

Remove temporary files

Your macOS, your apps, and your browser all use a shortcut called 'caching' to run faster. But over time, those caches fill up with useless information that bogs down your computer.

Why is it important to clear the cache? The short answer is that caches litter and bloat Macs. They aren't just a byproduct of browser history — most systems and apps, such as Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Mail and Photos, create huge amounts of temporary files that linger in the background. These caches of data are essentially just junk files, and they can be safely deleted to free up storage space.

When it comes to cleaning a Mac, you have two options: delete files manually or get a cleaner app to help you. Clearing your cache files with CleanMyMac is the quickest, safest way we know.

Get rid of hidden trash

Another source of system-slowing junk is email and text attachments. Even if you don’t download an attachment, your desktop mail client holds onto a version so that it can show you previews and access the file more easily. 'But I deleted that email!' you say. Often that’s not enough—these downloads can hang around long after the original email is gone.

It’s possible to clean them out manually. You can use the macOS Optimize Storage feature we’ve described above. Choose what exactly you want to be removed — mail attachments, watched video, or both. Still, CleanMyMac X is a much faster option to clean up the trash on Mac. Here’s how to use CleanMyMac X to empty all trash folders on your Mac:

Open CleanMyMac X on your Mac
Select 'Trash Bins' from the left hand side
Select 'Scan' at the bottom of the window
Select 'Review Details' to see what CleanMyMac X found, or 'Empty' to delete all trash files on your Mac

Here’s a little trick for you: If you want to be sure you keep the needed files and attachments at your fingertips, use Trickster app to remember them for you. Configure your file tracking inside the app and make sure you’re never confused about what’s stored on your Mac. The important stuff is always in Trickster.

If you want a clutter-free email client, Canary Mail is your perfect choice. The app not only automatically clear away the trash, but also allows to automatically unsubscribe from tons of mailing lists — so that you stop receiving the clutter.

Empty downloads and trash bin

Your Mac’s ‘download’ folder is where most apps, like Safari or Chrome, dump files. It’s also the default folder for email downloads. And it can get really full.

Many of us simply download a file, access it, then forget about it once we’re done with it. The downloads folder can get chock full of files we no longer need, or want. It’s smart to comb through it ever so often and delete files you don’t want, or move them to cloud storage containers using CloudMounter.

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Some downloads are hidden, taking up even more space. And the further back you go the more useless these documents are. Do you really need to keep a text file labelled 'Christmas shopping list 2015' or 'Dream holiday Summer 2016?' Probably not. Free up some much-needed space on your Mac and delete as many of these old download files as possible, and remember to come back and tidy it up every few months.

CleanMyMac can help for sure. But also, consider switching your email client to Unibox, which automatically reduces excessive downloads.

AppleInsider described Unibox as 'the best client we tried,' and Macworld said it is 'A welcome, fresh new approach to email on the Mac.' Unibox groups emails by sender and includes an attachment list, so you can quickly find what you need, then delete those documents out of the Downloads folder.

Uninstall unused apps

Have you ever downloaded an app, then stopped using it? We all have! Those apps occupy memory on your Mac – sometimes a lot of space, too.

CleanMyMac X has a handy 'Uninstaller' module which makes it easy to identify and remove all unwanted apps from your Mac. It even deletes associated files, so all traces of an unused app are taken away.

Get rid of old backups

Something else that comes as a surprise to most Mac users is just how many backups your system carries at any given time. Copying and pasting, and the duplicate feature make it too easy to replicate your work in different folders.

At the same time, you’ve probably got dozens of cached backups of files and documents that are invisible but taking up more space than you’d want. Like Time Machine backups. Every time you use Apple’s built-in backup utility, it creates local snapshots that are stored locally on your Mac. This may result in up to 100 GB Time Machine clutter on your hard drive.

CleanMyMac will find old backups for you and remove them in a click. In its 'Maintenance' module, you can select 'Time Machine Snapshot Thinning' to automatically remove older Time Machine backups you no longer need.

But also, switch your backup client to Get Backup Pro to backup only those units you want (for Mac). If you need to quickly transfer files or folders to another server, use a backup sync app ChronoSync Express.

If you want to quickly backup your iOS device on Mac — for instance, before hard resetting or factory resetting iPhone — you can use AnyTrans. You can even schedule instant backups to never worry about losing data when syncing your iOS device with Mac.

Get rid of desktop clutter

Organizing your Mac desktop doesn’t directly help your memory woes, but it can help you find files faster and avoid multiple downloads of the same file.

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Apple’s chosen method is called Stacks. A simple right-click on your desktop brings up a menu; selecting 'Use Stacks' puts your files into folders by type. Images, screenshots, and other files will be held in expandable folders, decluttering your desktop for good. Future downloads will all fall into those categories, too.

You may prefer Spotless, an app that affords you far more control over how your desktop is organized. You can set rules for organization, and tuck files into other folders on your Mac by dragging and dropping into one location. Spotless takes care of the hard work for you!

You deserve a faster Mac

By eliminating both hard disk and desktop clutter, you’ll improve your Mac’s performance as well as your own workflow. Plus, Setapp’s decluttering, disk cleanup, and analysis apps help you complete what would be a tedious chore in just a few clicks. There’s no telling how much time and effort you’ll save by giving yourself (and your Mac) a break.

How Do You Free Up Disk Space On A Mac

There are plenty of great ways to manage your Mac’s memory without rushing out to buy a new computer. We’ve shown you the best ways here!

All the apps we mentioned in this article are available for free during a seven day trial of Setapp, the world’s best suite of productivity apps for the Mac. In addition to ClanMyMac X, Spotless, Gemini, CloudMounter, Get Backup Pro, and ChronoSync Express, you’ll have unlimited access to Setapp’s full catalog of nearly 200 Mac apps. When your free trial is over, Setapp is only $9.99 per month. Give it a try today!

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