How to clean up your macOS or Mac OS X hard disk drive?
SSD (Solid State Drives) are very fast, stable, and offer great performance. Unfortunately, as compared to HDDs (Hard Disk Drives), the capacity-to-cost ratio is not so good. There are, however, methods to free up hard drives to obtain additional capacity for computer systems, including the macOS. None of these methods can expand the default disk capacity, but in some cases, even several extra gigabytes might help. You can also consider moving your data to an external drive or a cloud storage to free up storage.
Certain data and files are important and you will not want to delete or move them, however, some files are redundant and can be removed without consequences. If you know which files you can safely delete, you can free up this space. Although the Windows operating system is known for inefficient clutter, the macOS also produces unnecessary files that take valuable disk space. In this article, we describe some methods to clean macOS disk space.
Then click Target Disk Mode button, when the computer has started up, a disk icon appears on the desktop of the other Mac. Access the disk and got to /Users/username location, to delete some files. Then select the disk and get info to check the available storage, make sure the available storage is more than 30 GB. What is 'Other' in the Mac Storage? According to Apple, in OS X El Capitan or earlier versions, 'Other' files are those that your Mac doesn't recognize as belonging to any other category. These include files within disk images or archives, data stored by apps such as Contacts or Calendar, and app plug-ins or extensions. I use Disk Inventory X. The program is so stable that I have been using the same version since last 5-6 years. It is open source also. New version 1.2 was released only when Apple started giving warning about old binaries. – Pankaj Jangid Sep 17 '19 at 7:08. Choose Apple menu About This Mac and 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.
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Inspect the drive to ensure that the system is running out of free space
Some issues relating to lack of storage might be difficult to determine, and can even be due to fake error logs. So, first ensure that the system is in fact running out of free space. To check available space on a hard drive, there are two methods: 1) access the Apple menu and select About this Mac, or; 2) choose the Storage tab. Mac cleanup download. More detailed information can be found within the Disk Utility feature, which is located in the Applications folder under Utilities. Once Disk Utility is launched, select a drive connected to the Mac.
Begin by cleaning Trash
Once you are sure that the drive is actually full, the next step is to simply clean the computer (as if you were cleaning your home: you empty the trash). Open the Finder menu and choose Empty Trash. Bear in mind that some applications such as Mail, iMovie, iPhoto, and others, have their own Trash. To clean those apps, follow the steps below:
- Mail: click Mailbox, choose Erase Deleted Items, select In All Account and Mailbox, and finally click Erase Junk. Alternatively, to avoid permanently losing your files, choose to archive your emails by following the steps below.
- iPhoto: click on iPhoto from the menu at top of the screen and choose Empty iPhoto Trash.
- iMovie: click on File from the menu on top of your screen, select Move to Trash or File, and then choose Move Rejected Clips to Trash
Clear unnecessary Downloads
The Downloads folder stores all files downloaded from the Internet. Often, these are forgotten after use and continue to use storage space. This is an excellent area to address when looking to free up space on your drive. Delete all redundant Download files. Open Finder. In the sidebar, choose the Downloads folder. Disk image (.dmg) files commonly occupy most unused storage space.
Remove unused applications
Unused apps in isolation might not take up a great deal of space, but the amount of hard drive storage used by them collectively can be significant. Furthermore, removing apps on Macs is simple, especially those installed through App Store. To delete them, open Launchpad and click and hold the icon of the program you wish to remove. When the icon starts to animate, click the delete (x) button. To delete any other app, drag the icon to Trash, and then empty Trash.
Make space without losing any data
The best way to gain extra space on the Mac is to move non-executable files such as photos, movies, documents and any large files, to additional external storage, for example, an external drive, USB drive, DVD/CD drive, or cloud storage.
Compress large items
Mac Os X Disk Image
Another method to obtain some free space is to compress files. Compressed files remain on the computer, but occupy less space. On the other hand this can be less efficient than deleting or moving files to external storage. To find the largest files on the drive, open Finder, from the sidebar select the Device (the label you provided), and then type criteria into the search field. When the location of your search appears (for example This Mac), click the add (+) button, click the first drop-down menu, and choose Other. Find the logical size option, enable it, and then click OK.
Choose the 'is greater than' condition and type the amount (i.e. 50 Mb). To compress items, right-click or hold control and left-click it, and then select the Compress 'name' option.
If you are using an earlier version of macOS, click Go from the Finder menu, select Home, choose File, click Find, and then open the Find menu. Find the File size option. Choose the 'is greater than' condition and type the amount (i.e. 50 Mb). To compress items, right-click or hold control and left-click it, and then select the Compress 'name' option. To archive your emails, open the Mail application, select a folder you wish to archive (e.g. Inbox), drag it to the desktop. The mbox folder will appear on your desktop, right-click it or use the control and click combination, and select Compress 'Inbox.mbox'. Now you can delete your messages from Mail.
Delete unnecessary temporary files, system caches, and logs
System stores a number of System logs and temporary files - deleting them will increase the available space on your drive. To clean the system from this type of file, we recommend Combo Cleaner or other third-party applications.
Check Disk Space On Mac
Clear the browser cache storage
Browsers store website data such as cookies and cache information. Cleaning these hidden files might free up storage space. To clean up Safari, simply click Safari on the menu at the top of the screen and select Clear History. Browsers such as Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox can be cleaned in a similar way.
Mac Os Disk Utility Download
Video Showing how to obtain free space on your macOS or Mac OS X drive:
