How To Free Disk Space On Mac

Oct 17, 2016 I realized that I needed to clean up my computer and free up disk space. In this article, I explain what I did to increase available disk space on my Mac. Following these tips will help your free up a lot of space on your Mac running macOS Sierra (or OS X). Please also note that freeing up space will likely increase your Mac's performance. 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 get CleanMyMac X for free and wave goodbye to space-hogging files.

1. How To Clear Space On Your Mac
2. How To Get More Disk Space
3. Free Up Disk Space On Mac

It's recommended that you keep at least 15-20% of your Mac's memory free to keep it running smoothly. Optimizing storage is an efficient way to do this. But there are also several other steps you can take to free up space on MacBook Air, Pro, or any other macOS device. The quickest way to free up space on your Mac is to automatically remove files that you don't need. Without realizing it, you can accumulate gigabytes worth of duplicate files and folders on your computer. The problem is that it can take so much time to find and delete these duplicates that people do not bother to do it even if they want to.

Can you play nba 2k20 on mac. Optimized Storage helps you save storage space 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.

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 to save space by automatically removing watched movies and TV shows. When storage space is needed, movies or TV shows that you purchased from Apple and already watched are removed from your Mac. Click the download icon next to a movie or TV show to download it again.

Your Mac will also save space by keeping only recent email attachments on this Mac when storage space is needed. You can manually download any attachments at any time by opening the email or attachment, or saving 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.

How To Clear Space On Your Mac

Reduce Clutter

Reduce Clutter helps you 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 or later, 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. To turn off iCloud Drive entirely, deselect iCloud Drive.
• If you're using 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 or later, 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 you're using 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 described in this article, 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.

When you check the free disk space on your Mac, you will get the bad news about the 'Disk is Almost Full'. That means a large amount of files are occupying most of the disk space on your Mac. What you need is to delete those junk files and clear disk space on the device.

For your Mac to run efficiently without any problem you need to learn how to free up disk space on Mac safely. This article is aimed at efficiently teaching users how to effectively solve this problem.

What to Do When 'Your Disk is Almost Full' Message Pops up

It is a major problem when this error message pops up. Unfortunately, it affects how well and how frequently you are able to use your device.

When disk is almost full, there are many observable markers like Mac will begin to operate really slow, Mac may crash in some instances, apps become slow to respond, and the system may become overheated. Therefore, when 'Your disk is almost full' message pops up, you should check your current disk space and start to free up disk space on Mac.

What is Occupying So Much Space on My Mac

It comes as a surprise sometimes that you are really out of free space. If you would like to check out what is taking up space on the Mac (before finding a solution), feel free to check the current space usage on the device.

Photographs, movies or Backups are known to use up the most space. But it often happens that the most important consumers of disk space will be the 'Other' files, including cookies, caches, archives, logs, disc images, extensions, plugins, and the likes. As soon as you realize what is using up your disc space, you can review your folders and find out the files to select for removal.

You can view your storage use by choosing This Mac from the Apple menu and switching to the storage area. You will find just six general classes of information stored on your own Startup Disk. A wider bar is indicative of a larger space consumed. These six classes or categories are documents, photos, movies, audios, documents, Other.

Simply put, you need to clean up unnecessary files because of the absence of free space with which to store more information. Given the technicality of Apple products, there are a few tools out there that can perfectly do justice to this problem. One of the best and most user-friendly is the Umate Mac Cleaner.

How to Clear Disk Space on Mac like A Pro

We are going to be talking about Umate Mac Cleaner since it is the best Mac Cleaner available. The most important is the whole cleanup process can be done with simple cilcks by using this powerful app. When compared to the manual operation this software is more efficient. Clearing disk space with the help of Umate Mac Cleaner can be categorized into two main parts:

Release More Disk Space with Quick Clean & Deep Clean Modes

Quick Clean: Automatically detect various files that can be deleted from your Mac without affecting the proper functions of the Mac. This allows you to do a Mac disk cleanup with just a click of a button, unlike manual removal which are usually tedious and time-consuming.

Deep Clean Mac matte lipstick in diva. How to remove hp printer from mac. : If you are interested in knowing how to free up disk space in Mac then we suggest doing a deep clean after the quick clean. As the name suggests this feature goes deeper when searching for files to get rid of. When it comes to scaning and cleaning speed, the app is 3x faster than other 3rd parties Mac cleaner apps. In addition, more than 40 types of files supported to be cleaned up.

The files that can be deleted by using quick clean and deep clean modes are:

How to Perform Quick Clean & Deep Clean

Using Umate Mac Cleaner is a very easy process. All you have to do is:

Step 1： Install Unmate Mac Cleaner and launch it.

Step 2： Clicks on 'Scan' . After scanning, the software shows you a list of suggested file you can delete safely with Quick Clean and Deep Clean.

Step 3： Click on 'Clean' to get rid of the selected files.

Extra Tip: Other 12 Manual Methods to Free Up Disk Space On Mac

The easy way would be to let Umate Mac Cleaner do the job. However, there are other methods that can help further provide solution on how to free disk space on Mac. They are outlined below:

1. Optimize Storage

This is the built-in feature from Mac OS Sierra. They added this feature with the aim of cleaning up your disk from time to time. You can access it by choosing This Mac from the Apple menu and switching to the storage area, then click on Manage Storage. This feature comes with four options. Just choose a desired function as you need.

• Optimize Storage
• Store in iCloud
• Reduce Clutter
• Empty Trash Automatically

2. Empty Trash Bin

Moving files into your trash does not mean they are deleted. The actual amount of hard disk space occupied by information within trash can be surprising. Though transferring data files to trash removes files out of visible folders, they remain saved to the disk.

To completely clear the trash, click on the icon at Dock and choose Recycle Bin, or alternatively you may open the trash and then select certain files that you prefer to delete permanently.

3. Remove Duplicate Files

When you check your hard disk, you could realize that you have just two or even three copies of several documents --maybe you accidentally downloaded a file twice, or perhaps you added songs to iTunes, which already exist inside their unique location. Such duplicate data should be removed and that would be definitely an efficient way on how to get more disk space on Mac.

4. Delete Caches

Caches are files meant to aid the acceleration of certain tasks. These so-called temporary files tend to consume space over time. This is another aspect where the Umate Mac Cleaner is exceptional.

5. Delete Old iOS Backups

If you use iOS devices, try to back up your devices with iCloud. Your mac may end up with multiple backups when you use iTunes for back up. Deleting such old backups will free up some space.

6. Remove Unused Applications

Removing outdated, unused applications is actually a wonderful means to free up disk space. You have to carefully go over your applications and delete the programs you seldom use. Such applications must however be deleted, and not just trashed. Trashing also consumes space. This is one of the reasons Umate Mac Cleaner remains helpful as it can uninstall rarely used apps to free up more disk space efficiently.

7. Delete Temporary And Downloaded Files

There are some programs that are already installed on your computer. Whether or not you use them, they consume space on their own. Such pre-installed apps can occupy a huge amount of disk space unknown to you. You should simply go through your installed programs, preferably according to size. Find the ones you rarely use and are consuming much space. Such programs should be deleted or uninstalled.

8. Clean up Movies, Pictures And Music Folders

This part is straightforward. Whether albums on iTunes you do not listen to or pictures and movies you do not need anymore, they consume space unnecessarily and should therefore be deleted.

9. Clean Up Mail Attachments

For people who have been using the same email address for quite some time, there is usually a build up of email attachments. This takes up so much space over time. For those using more current mail service providers like Gmail, you can set the system to not download attachments automatically or change the number of messages synced. You need to delete them manually by clicking on the messages with the largest sizes (after sorting by size), and then click on remove. The issue of mail attachments can be solved easily using the Umate Mac Cleaner, as it can manage disk space on Mac and delete them with one click.

10. Remove Logs Files

How To Get More Disk Space

The logs folder on your Mac is also a good place to release extra space. The folder is used for storing some logs files of the Mac system, which are always useless. Try to delete them to get more room for your device. You can easily locate these logs files in the Library folder.

Free Up Disk Space On Mac

11. Delete Languages Files

The logs folder on your Mac is also a good place to release extra space. The folder is used for storing some logs files of the Mac system, which are always useless. You can delete them without thinking to get more room for your device. Just go to the Resource folder on Mac and find the files you want to get rid of.

12. Move Big And Infrequently Used Files to External Drive

You might need to consider relocating items (for instance, photos, huge files, movies, etc.) to some other storage disk, like cloud storage, USB drive, external disk drive, or DVD.

Conclusion

Whether you are a new Mac user or a diehard fan of Apple devices, one thing is sure. At some point, you will receive space disk-related error messages. 'How do I free up disk space on my Mac' is a usual question for a Mac user but effectively getting rid of files is not an easy thing to do, especially without the right tools. Umate Mac Cleaner is a perfect software to effectively remove those junk files that are secretly eating up your disk space.