How to Free Up Disk Space on Your Mac(Olga Romanova/ iStock / Getty Images Plus)
- Mac Software To See What Taking Up Hard Drive Space Windows 10
- Mac Software To See What Taking Up Hard Drive Space Free
- Mac Software To See What Taking Up Hard Drive Space
Jun 19, 2019 See What's Taking Up Space and Delete Old Files. The bigger the files you can delete, the more space you can free up—so let's go hunting. Click the Apple menu in. Jun 25, 2018 If you are concerned with how much storage space you have remaining on your Mac computer, you can check its usage folder to see how much space each category is taking up, including Other. Click on your desktop or the Finder icon from the Dock. Select the Apple Menu icon in the upper left corner of the screen. Click on About This Mac.
Don't have enough storage on your Apple computer for all the apps and documents you need? It's time for some cleanup. Here's how to free up disk space on your Mac.
Mac Software To See What Taking Up Hard Drive Space Windows 10
If your Mac's hard drive is bursting at the seams—slowing things down and leaving no room for new music, photos, and documents—it's time to do a little cleaning. You could try your hand at manually weeding out unnecessary files, or you can turn to a few programs that will automate much of the process. Here are a few simple ways to clean up your Mac.
See What's Taking Up Space and Delete Old Files
The bigger the files you can delete, the more space you can free up—so let's go hunting. Click the Apple menu in the top-left corner of the menu bar and choose About This Mac.
If that overview says you're running macOS 10.12 Sierra or higher, then you can merely click the Storage tab to get a basic idea of what's taking up so much space on your drive—like documents, photos, music, and so on. If you discover you have 100GB of music on a 128GB drive, for example, then it's a fair bet you should clean up that iTunes library.
Mac Software To See What Taking Up Hard Drive Space Free
Click the Manage button and you will have the option to see a much more detailed breakdown. The left sidebar shows you each of the aforementioned categories, and you can click on them to see the biggest files of that type. For example, you may find that you have multiple gigabytes of video from an old project you no longer need, or huge iOS backups from devices you no longer own.
Right-click any of these files to delete them, and you should be able to free up a decent amount of space. (Just don't forget to empty the Trash when you're done—if files are in the Trash, they're still taking up space on your Mac!)
If you don't have macOS Sierra, or you want to drill down even further into your system, you can accomplish similar things with a tool like Disk Inventory X. It may not be the prettiest disk space analyzer available for macOS, but it's free and offers an exhaustive list of which folders, files, and file types are hogging your hard drive.
Move Files to the Cloud
From the same Manage Storage window mentioned above, you can click Recommendations in the upper-right corner to run a few operations that may help free up space. For example, macOS can automatically remove iTunes movies and shows you've already watched (while keeping them re-downloadable for later).
You can also choose to store documents, photos, and/or messages in iCloud instead of on your computer. You'll likely need to buy iCloud storage for this feature to be useful, though.
If you use another cloud syncing service, like Dropbox, open its settings and make sure you're only syncing the folders you need. If you have large files in the cloud that you don't access regularly on this machine—perhaps you only have them there for backup purposes—you can de-select those folders in the settings of your cloud storage app so they don't sync to your Mac. They'll still be available from Dropbox.com if you need them, but they won't take up space on your computer.
Find and Delete Duplicate Files
As you investigate your drive, you may find that you have two or even three of some files—maybe you accidentally downloaded a file twice, or perhaps you added music to iTunes, but those songs also exist in their original location. Deleting these duplicates can help free up space, especially if there are a lot of them.
The best way to find duplicate files is with a third-party app like Gemini 2. It's rather expensive for a full license, but the free trial should be all you need for a quick duplicate search—just run the scan, and click the drop-down arrows next to each of the results to see which files are actually duplicates you can delete.
The paid version will clean up those files automatically, while the free version makes you do it one-by-one. We recommend the latter anyway, so you don't accidentally delete something you need.
Mac Software To See What Taking Up Hard Drive Space
Remove Caches and Other Temporary Files
Your computer keeps a collection of temporary files on its hard drive so it can re-access them later. Many people advocate clearing these caches occasionally to free up space, but unlike the above tricks, clearing temporary files only helps you...well, temporarily.
Those caches will fill right back up as you continue using your computer, so this is only worthwhile if you're extremely low on space and just need to get by for a few days while you finish that large project, or wait for a bigger hard drive in the mail.
CCleaner is a free program that will scan your system for temporary internet files, system logs, and other unnecessary files. Install the app, open it up, and click the Analyze button in the bottom-right corner. It'll present you with a list of removable files, and you can click Run Cleaner to delete them.
If you want something more thorough, CleanMyMac X was able to find even more deletable files on my system, but it costs $35 for a one-year license.
If All Else Fails, Grab an External Drive
If you're still low on space after going through all the above steps, it may be time to bite the bullet and upgrade your storage. You can upgrade the internal drive on some older Macs, but most of Apple's modern offerings solder the storage onto the motherboard. As a result, you are then forced to buy a new Mac if you want more internal storage. (Google your specific model of Mac and see what your options are.)
If you can't upgrade the internal storage, hope is not lost: you can still grab an external drive and offload some of your less-used files to that instead. Check out our list of the best external hard drives and those that work especially well with Mac to see what's available.
What About Windows?
If you have a sluggish Windows PC too, here's how to free up some space.
Optimized Storage in macOS Sierra and later* can save space by storing your content in iCloud and making it available on demand. When storage space is needed, files, photos, movies, email attachments, and other files that you seldom use are stored in iCloud automatically. Each file stays right where you last saved it, and downloads when you open it. Files that you’ve used recently remain on your Mac, along with optimized versions of your photos.
* If you haven't yet upgraded to macOS Sierra or later, learn about other ways to free up storage space.
Find out how much storage is available on your Mac
Choose Apple menu > About This Mac, then click Storage. Each segment of the bar is an estimate of the storage space used by a category of files. Move your pointer over each segment for more detail.
Click the Manage button to open the Storage Management window, pictured below. This button is available only in macOS Sierra or later.
Manage storage on your Mac
The Storage Management window offers recommendations for optimizing your storage. If some recommendations are already turned on, you will see fewer recommendations.
Store in iCloud
Click the Store in iCloud button, then choose from these options:
- Desktop and Documents. Store all files from these two locations in iCloud Drive. When storage space is needed, only the files you recently opened are kept on your Mac, so that you can easily work offline. Files stored only in iCloud show a download icon , which you can double-click to download the original file. Learn more about this feature.
- Photos. Store all original, full-resolution photos and videos in iCloud Photos. 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.
- Messages. 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 iCloud.
Storing files in iCloud uses the storage space in your iCloud storage plan. If you reach or exceed your iCloud storage limit, you can either buy more iCloud storage or make more iCloud storage available. iCloud storage starts at 50GB for $0.99 (USD) a month, and you can purchase additional storage directly from your Apple device. Learn more about prices in your region.
Optimize Storage
Click the Optimize button, then choose from these options.
- Automatically remove watched movies and TV shows. When storage space is needed, movies or TV shows that you purchased from the iTunes Store and already watched are removed from your Mac. Click the download icon next to a movie or TV show to download it again.
- Download only recent attachments. Mail automatically downloads only the attachments that you recently received. You can manually download any attachments at any time by opening the email or attachment, or saving the attachment to your Mac.
- Don't automatically download attachments. Mail downloads an attachment only when you open the email or attachment, or save the attachment to your Mac.
Optimizing storage for movies, TV shows, and email attachments doesn't require iCloud storage space.
Empty Trash Automatically
Empty Trash Automatically permanently deletes files that have been in the Trash for more than 30 days.
Reduce Clutter
Reduce Clutter helps you to identify large files and files you might no longer need. Click the Review Files button, then choose any of the file categories in the sidebar, such as Applications, Documents, Music Creation, or Trash.
You can delete the files in some categories directly from this window. Other categories show the total storage space used by the files in each app. You can then open the app and decide whether to delete files from within it.
Learn how to redownload apps, music, movies, TV shows, and books.
Where to find the settings for each feature
The button for each recommendation in the Storage Management window affects one or more settings in other apps. You can also control those settings directly within each app.
- If you're using macOS Catalina, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click Apple ID, then select iCloud in the sidebar: Store in iCloud turns on the Optimize Mac Storage setting on the right. Then click Options next to iCloud Drive: Store in iCloud turns on the Desktop & Documents Folders setting. To turn off iCloud Drive entirely, deselect iCloud Drive.
In macOS Mojave or earlier, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click iCloud, then click Options next to iCloud Drive. Store in iCloud turns on the Desktop & Documents Folders and Optimize Mac Storage settings. - In Photos, choose Photos > Preferences, then click iCloud. Store in iCloud selects iCloud Photos and Optimize Mac Storage.
- In Messages, choose Messages > Preferences, then click iMessage. Store in iCloud selects Enable Messages in iCloud.
- If you're using macOS Catalina, open the Apple TV app, choose TV > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Files. Optimize Storage selects “Automatically delete watched movies and TV shows.”
In macOS Mojave or earlier, open iTunes, choose iTunes > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Advanced. Optimize Storage selects “Automatically delete watched movies and TV shows.” - In Mail, choose Mail > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Accounts. In the Account Information section on the right, Optimize Storage sets the Download Attachments menu to either Recent or None.
Empty Trash Automatically: From the Finder, choose Finder > Preferences, then click Advanced. Empty Trash Automatically selects “Remove items from the Trash after 30 days.”
Other ways that macOS helps automatically save space
With macOS Sierra or later, your Mac automatically takes these additional steps to save storage space:
- Detects duplicate downloads in Safari, keeping only the most recent version of the download
- Reminds you to delete used app installers
- Removes old fonts, languages, and dictionaries that aren't being used
- Clears caches, logs, and other unnecessary data when storage space is needed
How to free up storage space manually
Even without using the Optimized Storage features of Sierra or later, you can take other steps to make more storage space available:
- Music, movies, and other media can use a lot of storage space. Learn how to delete music, movies, and TV shows from your device.
- Delete other files that you no longer need by moving them to the Trash, then emptying the Trash. The Downloads folder is good place to look for files that you might no longer need.
- Move files to an external storage device.
- Compress files.
- Delete unneeded email: In the Mail app, choose Mailbox > Erase Junk Mail. If you no longer need the email in your Trash mailbox, choose Mailbox > Erase Deleted Items.
Learn more
- The Storage pane of About This Mac is the best way to determine the amount of storage space available on your Mac. Disk Utility and other apps might show storage categories such as Not Mounted, VM, Recovery, Other Volumes, Free, or Purgeable. Don't rely on these categories to understand how to free up storage space or how much storage space is available for your data.
- When you duplicate a file on an APFS-formatted volume, that file doesn't use additional storage space on the volume. Deleting a duplicate file frees up only the space required by any data you might have added to the duplicate. If you no longer need any copies of the file, you can recover all of the storage space by deleting both the duplicate and the original file.
- If you're using a pro app and Optimize Mac Storage, learn how to make sure that your projects are always on your Mac and able to access their files.