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If you’re reading this, you’re how To Free Up Space on mac. Why should you care, unless you saw an annoying message? When your hard drive is about 80% full, your Mac will noticeably slow down. According to magazine, hard drives that were almost full did 17% worse in the test. One of the contributors to your Mac’s lightning-fast performance is the solid-state drive (SSD) that it contains. However, despite the high cost of flash storage, Apple continues to include a 256GB solid-state drive (SSD) in the base model of its MacBook Air, iMac, and Mac mini computers. In addition, the cost of upgrading it is several hundred dollars.
Obviously, you can free up disc space by doing a quick “find and delete” on big files and other things you’ve downloaded, but in reality, that won’t get you very far. Most of the wasted space on your Mac can only be reclaimed if you look a lot deeper, such as by removing language files, removing duplicate files. If you don’t keep your Mac’s hard drive clean, you’ll eventually get the dreaded “Your disc is almost full” error, so you might as well start now and clear some space.
How To Free Up Space on mac
Uninstall unused Mac apps
- In the future, when you want to download a Mac app, research for a while and get one that doesn’t take much space. You can see the size of the app in the Mac App Store or its description page.
- Try not to have multiple apps that do the same thing. For example, if you’re pleased with Safari, there is no need to download Chrome, Firefox, Brave, and Edge, all of which are browsers, doing the same thing and collectively taking multiple gigabytes of space.
- If your MacBook Air or Pro just has a 64GB or 128GB internal drive, try to use the pre-installed apps like Safari, Calendar, Reminders, Mail, and Music instead of their third-party alternatives that will consume additional space.
- Open Safari and press Command + Comma (,) keys.
- Click Advanced and enable Show Develop menu in menu bar.
- From now, you can press Command + Option + E or click Develop > Empty Caches.
Delete sketches and attachments from the Apple Notes app
When you use the Notes app on your iPhone or iPad to draw something, that drawing is sent to your Mac. Also, notes with pictures may take up a lot of space on your Mac and in iCloud. Find these notes by clicking the search bar, then delete the ones you don’t need. Remember that anything you delete here will also be deleted from all your other Apple devices and iCloud.
Delete Mac screenshots
- Right-click on Mac’s desktop and choose Use Stacks. This will put all your screenshots in one bundle.
- Place the mouse pointer near this bundle and drag it to select it.
- Right-click and choose Move to Trash to delete all Mac screenshots at once!
Remove downloaded music, movies, and TV shows
- Open the music, movies, and TV shows apps and delete the ones you don’t need anymore.
- You can do the same thing with books, podcasts, and other files you’ve downloaded.
- macOS also lets you free up space by deleting movies and TV shows you’ve already seen.
- Click > About This Mac > Storage > Manage > Recommendation > Optimize next to the tv icon to turn this on.
Delete language files
- Open the Applications folder, right-click on an app and choose Show Package Contents.
- Click Contents > Resources.
- From here, you can delete .lproj folders. The one named en.lproj is for English, so avoid deleting that.
Optimize storage using Apple tools
- We’ve already talked about how Apple’s System Information screen can help you free up space.
- About once a month, go to > About This Mac > Storage > Manage to get rid of big, unused files.
- This will keep your Mac in good shape.
- This will help keep the local space on your Mac clean, fast, and free of clutter.
Why is Mac storage management important?
- Optimizing Performance: A well-managed storage system ensures that your Mac functions efficiently. When your storage is full or cluttered, it can slow down your computer, impacting its overall performance.
- Preventing Data Loss: Effective storage management helps you keep track of your files and ensures that important data is not accidentally deleted. It can also prevent data corruption or loss due to insufficient space.
- Maintaining Organization: Proper storage management allows you to keep your files organized and easily accessible. This makes it simpler to find what you need when you need it, saving time and reducing frustration.
- Maximizing Space: By managing your storage effectively, you can make the most of the available space on your Mac. This is crucial, especially if you have a Mac with limited storage capacity.
- Security and Privacy: It helps protect your sensitive data. By managing your storage, you can identify and delete unnecessary or outdated files that might contain personal or sensitive information.
- Preventing System Crashes: Running out of storage can lead to system crashes and instability. By managing your storage, you reduce the risk of these issues.
Conclusion
The amount of space available on your storage drive is limited. Upgrading to a solid-state drive (SSD) confers many benefits, but increased storage capacity is one of the most significant. The internal processes take up some of that space, and the operating system takes up some of that space as well. The remaining space is reserved for your saved programs, music, photos, files, movies, and anything else you’ve saved. The amount of storage space is typically expressed in gigabytes (GB).
Questions and Answers
On your Mac, there are probably applications that you no longer use but haven’t deleted yet for some reason. These applications take up valuable space on your hard drive and consume RAM when they first start up. There are a few different methods available for locating unused applications and uninstalling them; Finder is one of the easiest of these methods.
Simply enter “disk cleanup” into the search box located on the taskbar, and then pick it from the list of available options. Choose the drive from which you wish to remove files, and then click the “OK” button. Check the box next to the category of files that you want to remove from your computer. (By selecting the file’s name, you can learn more about the various types of files.)
It is perfectly safe to delete the cache data on your Mac, especially the cache for your browser. It is helpful to delete the cache if your browser is running slowly, you want to free up space on your computer by getting rid of clutter, or you want to uninstall apps.