- Free Space Computer
- Free Disk Space Macbook Air
- How To Get More Free Space On Mac Disk
- How To Get Free Space On Mac
- How To Get More Storage On Mac For Free
- How To Clear Space On Your Mac
Jul 21, 2021 When storage space is needed, only space-saving (optimized) 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. Learn more about Messages in. This will create more storage for you, but limit your computer’s aesthetics significantly. However, you can also customize which visual effects your computer will perform to your preferences in the same tab. 5 Ways to Free up RAM on Mac. For Mac users, there are many convenient tools to monitor and free up RAM storage on your computer.
Today in 2021, MacBooks are more spacious than ever. The new MacBook Air comes with a 256-GB hard drive. But no amount of storage seems to be enough as the ever-inflating digital media is taking over our hard drives. Cloud servers are only a partial answer to that. They aren’t getting cheaper and consume insane amounts of the world’s electricity. So if you want to take a load off your drive and help the planet, you should teach yourself a couple of storage-keeping tricks. Let’s go.
What’s causing low disk space on your Mac?
Before you begin to free up disk space, let’s identify what’s taking it up. From the Apple Menu in the upper left-hand corner of your screen, select About This Mac and then click the Storage tab in the window that opens. You’ll get a handy, color-coded graph that looks like this:
In the above example, you can see that apps, audio files, and “other” (for details on what this “other” category consists of, look here) are taking the most significant amount of space.
It’s nice to see what’s stored on your Mac, and even nicer to be able to browse the folders that contain the files themselves. Now that you’ve identified what’s on your drive let’s free up some space.
How to increase disk space on your Mac
There are several options here, so let’s go through a few.
1. Remove large and old files
Often the files that end up taking the most space are tucked away in “cold storage” on your computer. These are big movies, photos, or the like that you rarely look at but can’t part with, either. In this case, archiving the files and moving them to an external drive is a good way to free up storage space on your Mac.
Locating huge neglected files can be a pain, but it gets super easy with the CleanMyMac X app. It has a dedicated Large & Old File finder. It will help you find massive files and sort them by size to define the largest ones quickly.
You can download the free version of CleanMyMac X here.
As the name suggests, it finds files that occupy a lot of space on your disk but haven’t been opened for a long time. You can quickly review these files right in the app and decide which ones you want to remove. It’s a really handy feature if you have a lot of heavy stuff piled up.
2. Empty Trash
Review your Trash bin’s contents one last time before you empty it. Press Command and right-click the Trash folder on your Trash icon. Then, click Empty Trash to remove everything.
Use Command-Option-Delete to delete any folder immediately, bypassing Trash.
3. Clean up the Downloads folder
Files love to hide in your Mac’s Downloads folder. Old disk images, random photos, unused extensions, ZIP files… they’re all in there, not making a sound. Hiding. ? Go to Finder and browse what’s sitting in your Downloads, wasting space on your disk. Anything unnecessary can be dragged to the Trash.
4. Delete duplicate folders and files
How many times do we copy or download things twice? Like many users, I would prefer to have a backup twin of my important files. But that often ends up in my files being quadrupled…or what do they call a 4th or 5th copy of the same folder?
To effectively remove duplicate files and make space on Mac, you can use Gemini 2. This is how this app looks.
You can download this little duplicate finder here.
Gemini 2 analyzes potential duplicates by many criteria, not just the name of the file. It searches for:
- Duplicate folders
- Duplicate movies
- Similar images
5. Learn to use Optimized Storage
Optimized Storage is the built-in feature of the macOS. It’s a sorting algorithm that shows different categories of files on your Mac for review and removal.
- Click the Apple Menu > About This Mac > Storage.
- Choose “Manage…”
By far, the most-space demanding of your files will be Applications.
Using the quick tabs above, you will decide what is there you can toss away. Make sure also to check Recommendations (on top of the list). There are a couple more space-saving options there.
6. Uninstall unused applications
Free Space Computer
If you’re like me, you often try an app “...just to see what it does”. While that’s fun, it frequently results in a slew of forgotten apps. It’s a good practice to set a reminder to review your Applications folder and clean out the ones you no longer use. However, note that simply dragging an app into your Mac’s trash doesn’t eliminate all of its related files.
CleanMyMac X's Uninstaller feature, on the other hand, leaves no leftover pieces behind, which means more available space on your Mac. CleanMyMac X finds every app-related document and file, no matter where it has been tucked away and deletes it from your Mac.
And speaking of setting up a reminder, CleanMyMac’s scheduler will handle that task for you, too. Just tell it how often you’d like to be prompted to give your Mac a good cleaning and leave the rest to the app.
7. Delete your Desktop screenshots
Free Disk Space Macbook Air
Mac’s Desktop is where you keep screenshots by default. With a feature called “Stacks,” you can organize your Desktop into clearly labeled folders. One of such folders will be Screenshots, which you can later remove in one sweep.
- Go to your desktop.
- Right-click somewhere in the middle of your Desktop.
- Select “Use Stacks”
Now you should see the Screenshots folder with all your screengrabs neatly stuffed inside. Drag this folder to the Trash and empty it.
How To Get More Free Space On Mac Disk
8. Get rid of system junk
It’s not just your files that are hogging disk space — it’s also useless system files like logs, cache, unused binaries, old iOS backups and installers, and what not. Fortunately, CleanMyMac can find and eliminate them all to make low disk space a thing of the past, at last.
How To Get Free Space On Mac
System junk is comprised of:
How To Get More Storage On Mac For Free
- User cache files
- Application cache
- Broken downloads
- Unused .DMG installers
As you can see, the 'User cache' category alone can recover about 3 GB of space. So the best way to free up space on Mac is to start with this type of files.
With just a few clicks, you’ll discover what’s where and what’s ripe for deletion. The best way to free up hard drive space is to run CleanMyMac X and wave goodbye to space-hogging files. Don’t worry. You won’t miss them. Hopefully, you managed to clear a lot of disk space — drop by for more Mac housekeeping tips. 😉
System Information User Guide
macOS can help make more room on your Mac by optimizing its storage. When space is needed, it keeps files, photos and videos, Apple TV movies and shows, and email attachments in iCloud and makes them available on demand. Files don’t take up space on your Mac, and you can download the original files when you need them. Recent files and optimized versions of your photos are always on your Mac.
Choose Apple menu > About This Mac, click Storage, then click Manage.
macOS calculates how much space is being used by different categories.
Note: Wait until all categories are finished being calculated to ensure you’re seeing the accurate amount of space. Values are refined as each category is calculated.
View the recommendations and decide how to optimize storage on your Mac.
Recommendation
Description
Store in iCloud
Helps you store files from your Desktop and Documents folders in iCloud Drive, store photos and videos in iCloud Photo Library, store messages and attachments in iCloud, and optimize storage by keeping only recently opened files on your Mac when space is needed.
See Use iCloud Drive to store documents on your Mac, iOS, and iPadOS devices, Use iCloud Photos to store photos in iCloud, and Use Messages in iCloud.
You can modify these settings later in iCloud preferences, Photos preferences, and Messages preferences.
Optimize Storage
Save space by automatically removing Apple TV movies and TV shows that you already watched, and by keeping only recent email attachments on this Mac when storage space is needed.
See Change Files preferences in the TV app and Mail Account Information preferences.
Empty Trash Automatically
Automatically erase items that have been in the Trash for more than 30 days. You can modify this setting later in the Finder. See Delete files and folders.
Reduce Clutter
Quickly find files, apps, books, movies, and other items that are taking up space, then manually delete items you no longer need. See Find and delete files.
When space is needed on your Mac, macOS also clears caches and logs that are safe to delete, including temporary database files, interrupted downloads, staged macOS and app updates, Safari website data, and more.
How To Clear Space On Your Mac
Note: If your disk is partitioned, recommendations apply to only the partition that contains your home directory.
To see an overview of used and free disk space, choose Apple menu > About This Mac, then click Storage. See available storage space.