What is taking up space on my Mac?
There comes a time in every computer's life when it is full of files and programs, slowing it down so much that its owner searches for an article such as this in order to cure it of these ailments (before it gets thrown out the window!).
Worry not, you're in the right place. This article will take you through 8 steps which will free up space on your Mac - removing unneeded files and clearing space for the stuff you actually need.
No matter if you're tech savvy or not, anyone can use these tips to breathe new life into their Mac.
Mac users often freak out when they look at the Storage settings in About This Mac and find that System storage takes up way more.
- Nov 08, 2018 As well known, the Mac operating system usually takes up from 8GB to 13GB. So I don't think my Mac 'System' storage could be that huge, so I searched to find how it defines 'System' storage for a Mac, and how to free up that storage. What is in the Mac 'System' Storage? How to Clean Storage on Mac?
- Couple this with how Apple makes it impossible to swap out flash storage on MacBooks post-purchase, your choice of storage is a permanent one that you'll have to live with for a long time. Apple offers the 13-inch MacBook Air (M1, 2020) with 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, or 2TB of flash storage.
- Mac users often freak out when they look at the Storage settings in About This Mac and find that System storage takes up way more.
To find out how much space is available on your Mac:
- Open the Apple menu (the Apple icon in the top-left corner of your screen).
- Click 'About this Mac'.
- Click 'Storage'.
Office for mac tpb. This overview will show what categories are taking up the most space, as well as how much space is available on your Mac.
The 8 sections below address the biggest culprits of space-hogging on your Mac and how to clean them up.
Jump straight to:
1. Mac OS Storage Management
The first port of call when making space on your Mac is to see what tools your Mac offers you for such a task.
If your Mac is running macOS Sierra or later, it has great built-in tools for managing files and optimizing storage. To access these tools, click the apple icon in the top-left corner of your screen > About this Mac > Storage > Manage…
As you can see this is also how to check storage on Mac. The tool shows a breakdown of the storage space taken up on your Mac by media such as Apps, Books, Photos and others.
Let's have a look at each tool to see how it can help:
- Store in iCloud: Quickly store files (Documents, Photos and Messages) from your Mac in iCloud. When considering how to clear space on Mac, getting rid of files quickly springs to mind- However, if you need to keep the files, you can just move them to an external hard drive, or into iCloud!
Enabling this option will allow your Mac to automatically save space when it's needed.
This is great as you'll be able to access your files on any device using your Apple ID. However, if you have a large number of files, you'll need to purchase more storage space than your allotted free amount (5GB)- obviously, depending on the amount of space you need, this can quickly become an expensive option.
- Optimize Storage: For those who download and watch lots of movies and TV, this option can save you a lot of space and a lot of time. Enabling this option will allow your Mac to automatically remove such files (which can be HUGE depending on their length and quality) once you have watched them.
Empty Trash Automatically: Similar to the above, enabling this option allows the automatic removal of files, saving you time and space without having to keep on top of it manually. This will remove items in your Trash after 30 days of them being there. Be aware that once files have been removed from your Trash, you will not be able to retrieve them.
Side note: Many points in this article will advise the removal of unwanted files from your Mac. However, these files are not completely removed from your computer until you empty the Trash (the space is not regained until they are removed from Trash). You can manually empty it by clicking the Trash Can icon in your dock, then clicking 'Empty'.
Reduce Clutter: Find large and unused files on your Mac and delete them from your system. You'll need to delete them manually, but it's well worth it if you can remove files that you do not use.
Navigate to files that you don't need using the 'Large Files' or 'Downloads' sorters, then hit 'Delete..'. Note that this action will bypass sending the item to Trash, so it's permanent.
If you're finding unwanted files using the 'File Browser' tab, you'll need to right-click > 'Move To Trash'.
2. Find Duplicate Files Mac
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.
Luckily, you can use an app like Duplicate Sweeper to do this for you.
Duplicate Sweeper: Easily scan your Mac for duplicate files and photos. You can then select and remove duplicates based on your preferences. In this way you can keep your newest version of files and remove all duplicates with a click of a button.
Mac System Storage Huge Large
In the example below, I was able to remove over 6000 files with one-click. This freed up 2.3 GB of space on my MacBook. Imagine manually going through and comparing 6000 files without Duplicate Sweeper.. it would have taken forever!
For more information about Duplicate Sweeper, or to download the free trial:
Duplicate Sweeper homepageTry Duplicate Sweeper free ▼
Receive an email with a link so you can download the free trial on your computer:
Note: We respect your privacy. We won't share your Email address with anyone else, or send you spam.
3. Unused Apps- Uninstall Programs on Mac
One of the biggest areas you should consider when looking at how to free up space on Mac is your Apps. Maybe unsurprisingly, apps on your Mac can be some of the largest files on your computer. Removing apps that you don't use can free up a huge amount of space. Let's list your apps by their files size:
Open Finder, then open the Applications section. Display the items as a list (using the button with 4 horizontal lines), then click the ‘Size' header to reorder your applications by size. You can then work down the list and decide which applications you don't use. Simply drag an application from the list into the Trash Can on your Dock to remove them.
Remember that you'll need to empty your Trash Can to completely remove the applications from your Mac.
4. Clean up media and downloads
The quality of media like photo and video is constantly improving. Unfortunately, this usually means that the corresponding files are bigger than they used to be.
For this reason, your saved media could be a great place to free up some of that precious storage on your Mac.
Open Finder and look through your Pictures, Movies and Music folders. If there is media there that you don't want, select it and move it to Trash to get rid of later. If you prefer to delete this media from the associated apps like Photos and iMovie, see how to empty their trash.
It is also recommended to check your Downloads file for unwanted files too.
This folder can receive copious amounts of files downloaded from multiple sources. Many of these files you may have only needed to read or use once.
You can get to your Downloads folder by opening a Finder window and clicking the 'Downloads' header.
Again, select whatever files you don't need, then right-click > Move to Trash/Bin.
Extra: Zipped / Archived files
If you receive a zipped file (with the .zip extension), opening it will unzip the file or folder and create the files in a non-zipped form.
This will create files that you can use, but it will not remove the (now unneeded) zip file. If you've already unzipped, you can delete the .zip file.
On the flip side, you can use file archiving to compress files or folders that you don't use regularly. Ubuntu mac os x.
Say you have a folder of documents that you only need to save for safekeeping; right-click the folder in Finder and click 'Compress [file/folder name]'. This will compress the files and create a .zip file.
Don't forget to delete the original, uncompressed folder in order to save the space!
5. Delete iTunes backups
Depending on the number of files, photos, messages etc that you have stored on your iPhone, iPod or iPad, it's backup on your Mac can be huge.
Keeping backups of your devices is a good idea. If something was to happen to your device, your data can be restored to it (or another device) using your backup. However, these backup files can be massive, and you may never need them! For this reason, consider backing up your devices to iCloud instead – freeing up space on your Mac.
To set your device to backup to iCloud, go to Settings > (your name) > iCloud > iCloud Backup.
To initiate a backup, connect your device to a power source and also to a Wi-Fi network. Lastly, ensure that your device screen is locked and that you have enough free space in iCloud to store the backup.
How to delete backups on Mac - You can also delete the backups which you already have stored on your Mac. To do this, open iTunes and go to iTunes > Preferences > Devices. If you don't need the backups in the list, select and delete them!
Find out: where are iTunes backups stored?
Mac System File Large
Alternatively, if you don't want to use iCloud for backing up your data, or if you only need certain data from your backups, you could use iBackup Extractor. This handy tool allows you to access and browse your backups, and extract any important photos, messages etc. that you need. You can save this data to your computer, then delete the backup from iTunes as seen above!
6. How to Delete Temporary Files on Mac
Some of the most common questions asked are 'how to clear cache on mac' and 'how to delete cookies on mac'. Well, let's answer those for you!
Temporary and cache are files that are stored locally in order to speed up processes. For example, images from a website that you visited can be cached, so that when you visit the page again, you don't have to wait to download the images again, they are simply pulled in from the cache. That's great for processes that you use regularly, but without care, your temporary and cached files can build up and eat away at your Mac's performance.
Let's see how to clear cache on mac – Open Finder > Go > hold ‘option' and click ‘Library' > Caches. Select and delete any cache files and folders that you don't need to save space!
7. Taking out the Trash
Deleting files on your Mac usually only moves them to your Trash Can (or Bin).
This is great, because if you 'delete' something by accident, you can restore it to its original location - no harm done.
However, if you are culling files on your Mac to make space, you may wonder why you are not gaining storage after clicking delete.
To permanently delete files from the Mac, you'll need to empty your Trash Can. To do this, simply click the Trash Can (or Bin) icon in your Dock.
Here, you can review or restore files in your Trash/Bin.
To permanently delete all the files in your bin, click Empty. You'll be asked if you're sure, and to confirm the permanent deletion of the files.
Deleting files from Photos, iMovie and Mail apps..
Generally, you'll be able to use the steps above to permanently delete files. However, some apps have their own way to manage 'deleted' files.
As such, you'll need to empty trash cans in individual apps to ensure that files are fully deleted.
An example of this can be seen in the Photos app:
Click the 'Recently Deleted' header to access the trash in the Photos app.
After 'deleting' photos from the app, the files can remain in this section for up to 40 days before being automatically deleted.
Mac System Storage Huge Chest
If you are sure you'd like to permanently delete these photos, click 'Delete All' to remove them from your hard drive.
You can use similar steps to empty trash for other apps like iMovie and Mail.
8. Move files into external storage
The majority of the methods above cover how to delete unwanted files to gain space. But what you if want to keep your files?
If you need more space on your Mac, but deleting your files is not an option, you may want to consider investing in external storage.
You can purchase external storage drives pretty cheap nowadays.
The way this works is that you connect your external drive with your Mac via USB cable. The drive then pops up as a Location on your Mac:
You can then drag files from your Mac onto your external drive, or cut/paste them into specific folders on your drive.
Takeaways
These are the most effective steps to make the most of the available space on your Mac in our experience.
There's a lot of information above, but this is not an exhaustive list of everything you can do to clear space on your Mac. We hope that you now have the tools that you need to breathe new life into your Mac or MacBook.
Happy spring cleaning!
Most of us are keen to update to a new version of macOS as soon as it is available. macOS Big Sur has been out since November 12, still, many users couldn't update their Macs straight away. It's very frustrating if you see a message telling you that you don't have enough space to install the new macOS. Don't worry, though. There are lots of things you can do to fix it. We'll show you what they are in this article.
How much space do you need for Big Sur?
While the installer for Big Sur takes up less than 16GB of space, you should make sure that you have at least 20GB of free space on your startup disk before you try to download and install it. The more free space, the better. Your Mac uses disk space to store temporary files and provide storage for active apps and tasks (which is what RAM does), so you should never be running with almost no disk space left.
CleanMyMac X makes it very easy to free up disk space on your Mac by identifying junk files and allowing you to get rid of them with a click. It can also detect large and old files and show you the files taking up most space and uninstall applications.
How to free up space for macOS Big Sur?
Complete the following steps to ensure your Mac is ready to update to Big Sur.
1. Backup your Mac
Back up all files and data that are stored on your Mac. Preferably twice to different locations. While upgrading to Big Sur is safe, you never know when something might go wrong. If you use Time Machine or another backup tool, run a manual backup just before you upgrade. And, if you can, clone your startup disk to an external drive, too.
- Store in iCloud: Quickly store files (Documents, Photos and Messages) from your Mac in iCloud. When considering how to clear space on Mac, getting rid of files quickly springs to mind- However, if you need to keep the files, you can just move them to an external hard drive, or into iCloud!
Enabling this option will allow your Mac to automatically save space when it's needed.
This is great as you'll be able to access your files on any device using your Apple ID. However, if you have a large number of files, you'll need to purchase more storage space than your allotted free amount (5GB)- obviously, depending on the amount of space you need, this can quickly become an expensive option.
- Optimize Storage: For those who download and watch lots of movies and TV, this option can save you a lot of space and a lot of time. Enabling this option will allow your Mac to automatically remove such files (which can be HUGE depending on their length and quality) once you have watched them.
Empty Trash Automatically: Similar to the above, enabling this option allows the automatic removal of files, saving you time and space without having to keep on top of it manually. This will remove items in your Trash after 30 days of them being there. Be aware that once files have been removed from your Trash, you will not be able to retrieve them.
Side note: Many points in this article will advise the removal of unwanted files from your Mac. However, these files are not completely removed from your computer until you empty the Trash (the space is not regained until they are removed from Trash). You can manually empty it by clicking the Trash Can icon in your dock, then clicking 'Empty'.
Reduce Clutter: Find large and unused files on your Mac and delete them from your system. You'll need to delete them manually, but it's well worth it if you can remove files that you do not use.
Navigate to files that you don't need using the 'Large Files' or 'Downloads' sorters, then hit 'Delete..'. Note that this action will bypass sending the item to Trash, so it's permanent.
If you're finding unwanted files using the 'File Browser' tab, you'll need to right-click > 'Move To Trash'.
2. Find Duplicate Files Mac
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.
Luckily, you can use an app like Duplicate Sweeper to do this for you.
Duplicate Sweeper: Easily scan your Mac for duplicate files and photos. You can then select and remove duplicates based on your preferences. In this way you can keep your newest version of files and remove all duplicates with a click of a button.
Mac System Storage Huge Large
In the example below, I was able to remove over 6000 files with one-click. This freed up 2.3 GB of space on my MacBook. Imagine manually going through and comparing 6000 files without Duplicate Sweeper.. it would have taken forever!
For more information about Duplicate Sweeper, or to download the free trial:
Duplicate Sweeper homepageTry Duplicate Sweeper free ▼
Receive an email with a link so you can download the free trial on your computer:
Note: We respect your privacy. We won't share your Email address with anyone else, or send you spam.
3. Unused Apps- Uninstall Programs on Mac
One of the biggest areas you should consider when looking at how to free up space on Mac is your Apps. Maybe unsurprisingly, apps on your Mac can be some of the largest files on your computer. Removing apps that you don't use can free up a huge amount of space. Let's list your apps by their files size:
Open Finder, then open the Applications section. Display the items as a list (using the button with 4 horizontal lines), then click the ‘Size' header to reorder your applications by size. You can then work down the list and decide which applications you don't use. Simply drag an application from the list into the Trash Can on your Dock to remove them.
Remember that you'll need to empty your Trash Can to completely remove the applications from your Mac.
4. Clean up media and downloads
The quality of media like photo and video is constantly improving. Unfortunately, this usually means that the corresponding files are bigger than they used to be.
For this reason, your saved media could be a great place to free up some of that precious storage on your Mac.
Open Finder and look through your Pictures, Movies and Music folders. If there is media there that you don't want, select it and move it to Trash to get rid of later. If you prefer to delete this media from the associated apps like Photos and iMovie, see how to empty their trash.
It is also recommended to check your Downloads file for unwanted files too.
This folder can receive copious amounts of files downloaded from multiple sources. Many of these files you may have only needed to read or use once.
You can get to your Downloads folder by opening a Finder window and clicking the 'Downloads' header.
Again, select whatever files you don't need, then right-click > Move to Trash/Bin.
Extra: Zipped / Archived files
If you receive a zipped file (with the .zip extension), opening it will unzip the file or folder and create the files in a non-zipped form.
This will create files that you can use, but it will not remove the (now unneeded) zip file. If you've already unzipped, you can delete the .zip file.
On the flip side, you can use file archiving to compress files or folders that you don't use regularly. Ubuntu mac os x.
Say you have a folder of documents that you only need to save for safekeeping; right-click the folder in Finder and click 'Compress [file/folder name]'. This will compress the files and create a .zip file.
Don't forget to delete the original, uncompressed folder in order to save the space!
5. Delete iTunes backups
Depending on the number of files, photos, messages etc that you have stored on your iPhone, iPod or iPad, it's backup on your Mac can be huge.
Keeping backups of your devices is a good idea. If something was to happen to your device, your data can be restored to it (or another device) using your backup. However, these backup files can be massive, and you may never need them! For this reason, consider backing up your devices to iCloud instead – freeing up space on your Mac.
To set your device to backup to iCloud, go to Settings > (your name) > iCloud > iCloud Backup.
To initiate a backup, connect your device to a power source and also to a Wi-Fi network. Lastly, ensure that your device screen is locked and that you have enough free space in iCloud to store the backup.
How to delete backups on Mac - You can also delete the backups which you already have stored on your Mac. To do this, open iTunes and go to iTunes > Preferences > Devices. If you don't need the backups in the list, select and delete them!
Find out: where are iTunes backups stored?
Mac System File Large
Alternatively, if you don't want to use iCloud for backing up your data, or if you only need certain data from your backups, you could use iBackup Extractor. This handy tool allows you to access and browse your backups, and extract any important photos, messages etc. that you need. You can save this data to your computer, then delete the backup from iTunes as seen above!
6. How to Delete Temporary Files on Mac
Some of the most common questions asked are 'how to clear cache on mac' and 'how to delete cookies on mac'. Well, let's answer those for you!
Temporary and cache are files that are stored locally in order to speed up processes. For example, images from a website that you visited can be cached, so that when you visit the page again, you don't have to wait to download the images again, they are simply pulled in from the cache. That's great for processes that you use regularly, but without care, your temporary and cached files can build up and eat away at your Mac's performance.
Let's see how to clear cache on mac – Open Finder > Go > hold ‘option' and click ‘Library' > Caches. Select and delete any cache files and folders that you don't need to save space!
7. Taking out the Trash
Deleting files on your Mac usually only moves them to your Trash Can (or Bin).
This is great, because if you 'delete' something by accident, you can restore it to its original location - no harm done.
However, if you are culling files on your Mac to make space, you may wonder why you are not gaining storage after clicking delete.
To permanently delete files from the Mac, you'll need to empty your Trash Can. To do this, simply click the Trash Can (or Bin) icon in your Dock.
Here, you can review or restore files in your Trash/Bin.
To permanently delete all the files in your bin, click Empty. You'll be asked if you're sure, and to confirm the permanent deletion of the files.
Deleting files from Photos, iMovie and Mail apps..
Generally, you'll be able to use the steps above to permanently delete files. However, some apps have their own way to manage 'deleted' files.
As such, you'll need to empty trash cans in individual apps to ensure that files are fully deleted.
An example of this can be seen in the Photos app:
Click the 'Recently Deleted' header to access the trash in the Photos app.
After 'deleting' photos from the app, the files can remain in this section for up to 40 days before being automatically deleted.
Mac System Storage Huge Chest
If you are sure you'd like to permanently delete these photos, click 'Delete All' to remove them from your hard drive.
You can use similar steps to empty trash for other apps like iMovie and Mail.
8. Move files into external storage
The majority of the methods above cover how to delete unwanted files to gain space. But what you if want to keep your files?
If you need more space on your Mac, but deleting your files is not an option, you may want to consider investing in external storage.
You can purchase external storage drives pretty cheap nowadays.
The way this works is that you connect your external drive with your Mac via USB cable. The drive then pops up as a Location on your Mac:
You can then drag files from your Mac onto your external drive, or cut/paste them into specific folders on your drive.
Takeaways
These are the most effective steps to make the most of the available space on your Mac in our experience.
There's a lot of information above, but this is not an exhaustive list of everything you can do to clear space on your Mac. We hope that you now have the tools that you need to breathe new life into your Mac or MacBook.
Happy spring cleaning!
Most of us are keen to update to a new version of macOS as soon as it is available. macOS Big Sur has been out since November 12, still, many users couldn't update their Macs straight away. It's very frustrating if you see a message telling you that you don't have enough space to install the new macOS. Don't worry, though. There are lots of things you can do to fix it. We'll show you what they are in this article.
How much space do you need for Big Sur?
While the installer for Big Sur takes up less than 16GB of space, you should make sure that you have at least 20GB of free space on your startup disk before you try to download and install it. The more free space, the better. Your Mac uses disk space to store temporary files and provide storage for active apps and tasks (which is what RAM does), so you should never be running with almost no disk space left.
CleanMyMac X makes it very easy to free up disk space on your Mac by identifying junk files and allowing you to get rid of them with a click. It can also detect large and old files and show you the files taking up most space and uninstall applications.
How to free up space for macOS Big Sur?
Complete the following steps to ensure your Mac is ready to update to Big Sur.
1. Backup your Mac
Back up all files and data that are stored on your Mac. Preferably twice to different locations. While upgrading to Big Sur is safe, you never know when something might go wrong. If you use Time Machine or another backup tool, run a manual backup just before you upgrade. And, if you can, clone your startup disk to an external drive, too.
2. Free up disk space using CleanMyMac X
If you don't already have CleanMyMac X installed, download it for free here. This tool will help you clear some space and delete large and old files quickly.
- Launch CleanMyMac X.
- Choose System Junk in the sidebar and press Scan.
- When it's finished, press Clean to free up space, or Review Details to find out more.
3. Get rid of large and old files
Media files usually gobble up a large amount of disk space. And the worst thing is they are scattered around Mac's folders, making it difficult to find and remove them. CleanMyMac X proves to be useful here:
- Choose Large & Old files in CleanMyMac X's sidebar.
- Press Scan.
- When it's finished, use the middle column to filter files by type.
- Check files that you want to delete.
- Press Remove.
4. Use Apple's built-in storage management tool
Apple has provided a method for you to manage storage by showing you what is taking up disk space and making recommendations for deleting. It's not as quick and easy as CleanMyMac X, but it can help you save disk space. Here's how to use it.
- Click on the Apple menu and choose About this Mac.
- Select Storage and press Manage.
- In the Recommendations section, review each section in turn.
- Now go through each of the sections in the sidebar.
- Delete files or take further action, depending on what you choose.
5. Delete local Time Machine snapshots
There is one other thing you can try if you keep getting a message telling you that you do not have enough space to install Big Sur. You should only try it if you are sure there is enough space on your startup disk and that the message is wrong. And it will only work if you use Time Machine to back up your Mac.
Time Machine stores local snapshots on your Mac. Your Mac is supposed to count the space used by snapshots as free space, which is why it looks like you have enough space for the installation.
However, it seems that the installer may not realize the space is free. The solution is to delete the snapshots. This won't remove backups on your backup disk, just snapshots on your Mac.
Open Time Machine from System Preferences. Uncheck Back Up Automatically and wait some time till Time Machine deletes snapshots. Then you can turn Time Machine back on.
If you're familiar with Terminal, you can try deleting local snapshots manually.
- Go to Applications > Utilities and launch Terminal.
- Type:
tmutil listlocalsnapshots / - You will see a list of snapshots that look like this:
com.apple.TimeMachine.2020-10–09-002010.local - To delete a snapshot, type:
sudo tmutil deletelocalsnapshots - Then type the date part of the snapshot name. For example:
sudo tmutil deletelocalsnapshots 2020-10–09-002010 - Type Return and repeat for each snapshot you want to delete.
Hopefully, this helped you free up some space and update your Mac to the latest OS. If you're just preparing your Mac for the upgrade, don't forget to back up your data before you start clearing space. So you won't be afraid of losing anything important.
