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Free Up Space Mac Os X

Despite my MacBook Air having a 120GB hard-drive, I am always struggling to keep enough storage space free. Everytime I look at my available space, I am always hovering around 15-20GB.

Which you might think is no small amount, but when it drops below 10GB, the computer starts throwing up continual boot error messages.

Ever since I bought my first MacBook back in 2012, I havetried various methods of keeping the computer as clean as possible. Here arethe tried and tested methods I came up with. Some are obvious while others arenot.

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Find YourBiggest Files

The first step is to find your biggest space hoggers.

Some things will be self-evident. If you use iMovie forexample, video files you’re currently working on will take up a tremendousamount of space. If you download music from iTunes, all those m4a files will betaking up a lot of space. If you use the Photos app, the photo library islikely to hog up a lot of space.

The iMovie library is in the “Movies” folder and mine is currently 12GB in size (right-click onthe file and choose “Get Info” to seeits size). iTunes media, including music and movies, is in the “Music” folder (another 15GB). The photosdatabase is naturally in “Pictures”.

The best solution for things like iMovie and iTunes is simplyto move the folders to a large USB stick or attached portable drive and pointthe apps to the new locations.

Free Up Space Mac Os X

Sort Files By Size

How to check storage on mac

The next step is sort all of your hard-drive files according to size. To do this, open the Finder then in the top menu, select Go then Recents. If you don’t see recents, click on All My Files.

This then shuffles all of your files together. If you had to click All My Files, click the icon with three horizontal lines to show the files as a list.

Click Size in the header until the biggest file appears at the top. Note, this list does NOT include apps and system files. If you don’t see Size, just right-click in any of the column headers (kind, name, etc) and select Size.

If you right-click on one of the files, you can delete it. Or if you want to see which folder it is in first, right-click on it and select Show in Enclosing Folder.

There are apps which do all of this large file sorting for you, such as the free OmniDiskSweeper. But after trying it out, I’ve concluded it doesn’t do much more than what I have described above.

Delete AllUnneeded Files Or Move Them Off The Computer

The next step is to go on a big deleting purge.

How To Check Storage On Mac

Focus on areas where lots of files tend to accumulate. Thisis usually the Downloads folder, the Desktop, and the Trash bin. Deleteeverything you don’t need and empty the Trash. Right there, you are likely tonotice a big improvement in space.

Next, throw everything you want to keep into one folder.Next, get a large 128GB USB stick or a portable hard drive and transfereverything off the computer.

Use SelectiveSync On Cloud Storage

If you don’t want to use a USB stick or portable drive – oryou still want to be able to effortlessly bring back files to the MacOScomputer – then cloud storage is a solid choice. But to save space on yourcomputer, you need to use a feature called “SelectiveSync”.

Selective Sync is offered by all of the major cloud storage platforms, including the one I use (Sync.com). This is where all of your files are uploaded to the website of the cloud storage service, but in the desktop app settings, you can choose which of the files are synced to your computer.

So in the Sync.com desktop app preferences, I can uncheck theboxes of the folders I want off the computer but they will remain in my onlineaccount. Dropbox and Google Drive have this option too in their preferences.

UninstallUnneeded Apps – Properly

Uninstalling apps is much easier on a Mac than it is onWindows. With a Mac, you simply have to drop the app into the Trash bin anddelete it.

The trouble is, like Windows, this does not completely uninstall it. Temp files areoften left behind, building up a huge amount of crud that, over time,accumulates and takes up valuable space.

This is why I love the free AppCleaner.

With AppCleaner, you can either drag the app file ontoAppCleaner and it will hunt down all of the associated files for you to deleteat the same time.

Or you can set it so you can send the app file to the Trashand AppCleaner immediately opens by itself with all the related crud for you tonuke.

AppCleaner can also tell you how much space each app istaking up so you can decide if it is worth deleting it to make space.

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And you can also remove widgets and plugins, which won’t giveback THAT much space, but every bit counts.

Stop InstallingApps If There Is a Browser Version

A lot of popular apps actually now have equally good – if notbetter – web versions. This removes the need to install the desktop versions,which will save you space in the long run.

For example, LibreOffice takes up about 4GB of space on my computer. But if I were to uninstall it and use Google Docs instead, I will get that 4GB back and all the space that LibreOffice files would have taken up.

Also, be sure to read our sister-site article on how to use some web apps like desktop apps, thereby getting the best of both worlds.

Other apps which have good web versions include :

  • Mail (switch to web-based email instead).

Empty The iOSBackup Folder

If you are in the habit of using iTunes to backup your iOS devices to your Mac, you may want to consider deleting the iOS backup folder. When I checked it yesterday, it was almost 21GB, going back months!

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To find the folder, go to Finder, then Gothen Go To Folder.

How To Clear Memory On Macbook

In the box that comes up, type the following :

Delete the box that comes up. Just remember to make a new iOS backup again immediately afterwards or backup to iCloud.

How To Clear Space On Macbook

Conclusion

Free Up Space Mac Os X

These are the things I do on a weekly basis to ensure thecomputer is as clean as possible. Every six months, I go one step further andcompletely reformat the computer, which is something I will be covering in anarticle very soon.