- How To Free Up Hard Drive Space Macbook Pro
- How To Clear Space On Macbook
- Clear Space On Mac
- How Can I Get More Disk Space
- How To Free Up Hard Drive Space Mac
More ideas to free up hard drive space: Move your Photos to Photos.Google.com — it offers almost limitless storage and there is a Mac version of Google Photos you can download. Get a duplicate finder app for Mac ( Gemini 2 is a good pick) — duplicates can be extremely large. Fr merely having a Google Drive, users get 15GB free storage space. However, for additional space, you’ll have to incur monthly subscription fees. This Apple cloud-based storage software works best with Apple’s latest gear on the macOS Big Sur. When you use it on any macOS device or an iDevice, you get an extra 5GB of free space.
Why clean your Mac’s hard drive?
The most obvious reason is that you're running out of space on your boot disk. And, while there are many things you can do to free up disk space, including using Apple’s own storage management tools, it’s a good idea to start by getting rid of the junk that’s accumulated and that you don’t need. That way, not only will you free up space, you will also give your Mac a boost and help it run more smoothly.
What are the files that I should clean up?
Most of them are files that are left behind by applications, many of which you probably no longer use, and some of which you may have deleted and thought you’d uninstalled. These include:
Application libraries
Preferences files
Launch agents
Temporary cache files that were never deleted
Log files
In addition, web browsers store files on your Mac, including:
Cookies
Cache files of their own
History
Every email client you use stores attachments you’ve downloaded. You may also have language files on your Mac for languages you don’t need. And we haven’t even touched duplicate folders and outdated backups.
All these files take up space and could slow down your Mac.
Use automated junk detector
There are a number of things you can do by yourself to clean up files on your Mac’s main disk. However, I’ve found that the quickest and easiest way is to use a tool designed specifically for the purpose. There are several available, but I use CleanMyMac X because it has a ton of great features and it’s notarized by Apple. Here’s how to use its System Junk tool to get rid of junk files.
Here you can download a free version of this tool.
Install the latest version of CleanMyMac X.
Follow the instructions on screen to install it and then launch it from your Applications folder.
Click System Junk in the sidebar.
When it’s finished, it will tell you how much junk it has found. You now have two choices: get rid of it all with one click, or review what it’s found. To get rid of it, just press Clean. To find out more, choose Review Details.
In the Review Details view, you can see that everything CleanMyMac has found has a checkmark against it. If you see anything you don’t want to remove, just uncheck the box next to it.
Here is what I was able to find on my Mac:
That’s 6 gigs of very odd technical files that are almost impossible to dig out by yourself.
Tip: CleanMyMac X can also identify and remove Malware, which will also help keep your Mac’s drive clean.
Use Apple’s storage management tools
Apple has realized in recent versions of macOS that users who swap a computer with 1TB hard drive for 128GB or 256GB SSD are going to have issues with storage. And to that end, it has created a storage management tool that recommends ways in which you can save space, and provides options for discovering what’s taking up space and helping you do something about it.
Click on the Apple menu and choose About this Mac.
Select the Storage tab and press the 'Manage’ button.
With Recommendations selected, read through the list and press the button next to any that are relevant to you.
For example, next to Reduce Clutter, press Review Files. You can now organize files in the list by size, or see only those in your Downloads folder or that come from unsupported apps. Or you can choose File Browser to see all your files.
If you see any files you don’t need, press Delete.
Go through the rest of the items on the list in the left of the window and take any action that will clean up your hard drive, like removing image attachments from Messages, or deleting iOS device backups.
Tip: Don’t forget to empty your Trash after you’ve deleted some files.
Uninstall applications
Some apps come with their own uninstallers and where that’s the case, the best way to uninstall them is to use that. However, most applications don’t have such a neat solution. And many of us still think that simply dragging an app’s icon to the Trash will uninstall it. It won’t. Instead, it will leave tens, or even hundreds of files scattered in various folders on your drive, taking up space and possibly causing conflicts later on.
The best way to get rid of applications that don’t have their own uninstaller is to use a general uninstaller, like CleanMyMac X. It’s not the only uninstaller around, but it’s the one I prefer to use, because it’s quick, easy to use, and has lots of other functions, too.
Open a new Finder window and click Go (in the top menu).
Choose Applications
You may start by deleting your duplicate apps (see my screenshot)
Once again, you can drag your unwanted apps to the Trash. That’s good but it leaves behind leftovers as many Mac users know.
Luckily, if you’ve downloaded and installed CleanMyMac X (see above), it’s easy to uninstall all apps and their remainders completely.
Launch CleanMyMac X — download the app here (Apple-notarized version)
Choose Uninstaller in the sidebar.
Locate the app you want to uninstall in CleanMyMac’s main window (Tip, you can narrow down you search by clicking on the name of a developer in the middle window or category).
Check the box next to the app or apps you want to uninstall (you can uninstall multiple apps simultaneously) and press Uninstall.
Tip: If an app is misbehaving but you want to keep it around, you can click on the dropdown menu next to its name, labelled ‘Uninstall’ and choose Reset. The press the Reset button. That will return the app to the state it was in when it was first installed and should fix any problems.
Remove user account you don’t need
If you’ve had your Mac for a few years, you may have set up multiple user accounts. Perhaps a friend or family member also used the Mac, or maybe you set up one user account for work and one for leisure. Whatever the reason, if there are user accounts on your Mac that you no longer need, getting rid of them will help clean up your Mac’s hard drive.
Click on the Apple menu and choose System Preferences.
Select Users & Groups.
Click the padlock and type in your admin password.
Select the user you want to remove and press the ‘-‘ button.
Choose Delete the home folder to get rid of it and free up space. Or Save the home folder as a disk image to keep it. Remember to copy the disk image to another location on an external disk and delete it from your boot drive afterwards.
Press Delete User.
The user account and all the files in the home folder of that account will now be deleted – unless you chose to keep the home folder. The great thing about this tip is that each user account contains much more data than you may realise, since each has its own Library folder with possibly thousands of files in it.
More ideas to free up hard drive space:
- Move your Photos to Photos.Google.com — it offers almost limitless storage and there is a Mac version of Google Photos you can download.
- Get a duplicate finder app for Mac (Gemini 2 is a good pick) — duplicates can be extremely large.
- Find large unwanted media — use the Space Lens tool.
Discover your largest folders — build a visual map of your drive
In addition to the thousands of smaller files taking up space on your Mac’s hard drive, it’s likely that there are a number of very large folders and in some old files you don’t need access to regularly. Moving large files to a different location, like an external hard drive can free up lots of space very quickly, while archiving old files will also clean up your Mac’s hard drive without causing any inconvenience.
You could track down these files manually, by using the Finder to create a smart search based on file size or creation date, but CleanMyMac X has a tool called Space Lens that allows you to do it very quickly and easily.
Choose Space Lens in CleanMyMac's sidebar.
Press Scan.
You will see in the right hand window, files listed according to their size.
Your Mac’s hard drive can become cluttered with files once you’ve been using it for a while, and, as well as taking up space, these files can slow down your Mac and cause performance issues. Fortunately, it’s easy to clean up your Mac, by following the steps above. And it’s even easier if you use CleanMyMac X to help.
Mar 13, 2018 Hard drives are getting larger and larger, but somehow they always seem to fill up. This is even more true if you’re using a solid-state drive (SSD), which offers much less hard drive space than traditional mechanical hard drives. RELATED: 10 Ways To Free Up Disk Space on Your Mac Hard Drive. If you’re hurting for hard drive space, these. How to check a Mac’s free hard drive space. You also get a simplified overview of what sort of files are eating up your storage space. The Mac’s About box is the easiest way to see. Feb 11, 2017 Support Communities / Mac OS & System Software / macOS Sierra. In a nutshell: When I go to 'About This Mac Storage' the System files were taking up a whopping 90+ GB of my hard drive. Here is a screen shot. Finally, my macbook has free space again. Thank you so much!
Jul 21, 2012 I have the extract same issue. MacBook Pro with a 500gb internal drive. I have 17gb free space I spent the afternoon moving project and files to an external 1tb drive. My external show I have now used 200+gb of space and I only free up 6gb on my internal drive. Oh I am an IT tech I know the difference between move and copy.
How To Free Up Hard Drive Space Macbook Pro
Summary :
Many computer users find that the hard drive is filled up and they may wonder what is taking up space on the hard drive and how to clean up the hard drive. This article will solve these problems.
What Is Taking up Space on My Hard Drive
Many computer users may find that their hard drives are filled up without reasons after the computer is used for a while. And at last, low disk space error may come up (especially partition C). This problem will affect computer performance. For example: apps or files can't be downloaded, the computer gives no response to your command or it gives a delayed response.
Then, what cause this problem? Or what is taking up space on my hard drive? Many users may ask problems like these. Usually, the hard drive space is occupied by system files, installed apps or personal files, backups, virus or other malware, or other unknown files.
How to Check the Hard Drive Space
How can we know what files take up the hard drive space most? Here is a tutorial for how to see what's taking up space on a hard drive on Windows 10.
Step 1: Press Start button, and then navigate to Settings>System >Storage.
Step 2: Click a disk and then its storage usage will be displayed.
Click What Is Taking up Space on Win10 for more methods.
In general, computer users could check the hard drive space first, and then they can solve the low disk space problem according to the actual storage usage in their computers.
As for how to free up disk space, the following two categories of methods are suggested. And the method with MiniTool Partition Wizard is strongly recommended because it's versed in managing disk space and the ways provided by it can solve the problem radically.
How to Free up Disk Space on Windows
1. Free up Space with Disk Cleanup
Many computer users like to run Disk Cleanup to free up disk space. This is a common way for most of computer users. Right click the disk you want to clean up, and then navigate to Properties>Disk Cleanup. Then check the files you want to delete and click OK to carry out.
However, some users may find that it can't solve the problem fundamentally. Disk cleanup can't relieve the problem at all. Or it relieves slightly but the low disk space problem persists and it relapses after a while.
2. Deal with Personal Files to Free up Disk Space
If there are lots of personal files in hard drive, users can delete the unnecessary files to clean up hard drive. As for the important files, users can transfer them to another hard drive. Or, users can store files like music, movies, photos, etc. on external storage or in the cloud.
In a word, users could delete or transfer all files to another place except the files that must be stored in this disk. (Actually, this method not only can free up disk space, but also can help you to manage or optimize the disk space.)
How To Clear Space On Macbook
3. Delete Backups and Reduce Space Used for System Restore
If users have habit of making backups, they could delete the backups to free up disk space. At the same time, system restore points can be automatically created when users install a new app or update and they take up a lot of hard drive space.
So, users can delete the restore points or reduce the hard drive space used for system restore to free up disk space.
Here is a tutorial for deleting restore points and reducing space used for system restore.
Step 1: Open Administrator and right click This PC,and then click Properties from the drop-down menu.
Step 2: Click System protection from the pop-up window to make System Properties window pop up. And then click Configure button.
Step 3: Drag the block to adjust the max space usage for system restore points. Surely, there will be less restore points for system restore if you do so. Or, you can delete all restore points and disable system protection to free up disk space. But if you do so, there is no restore points for system restore.
4. Uninstall Programs
Surely, most of the time, it is programs and games that take upmost of the hard drive space. So, users also can uninstall apps or games that they no longer need to solve this problem. Press Start button and navigate to Settings>Apps>Apps & features to uninstall programs.
5. Run Antivirus Program
Sometimes, a virus or other malware may consume a lot of hard drive space. If you suspect the low disk space is cause by a virus, you can use an antivirus program like Windows Defender to run a virus scan and cleanup.
However, most of the time, the low disk space is not caused by a virus, and running Disk Cleanup or deleting personal files can't solve this problem. Although uninstalling apps can relieve the problem slightly, many users wouldn't like to adopt this method because most programs on the computer are useful and necessary for them.
To solve this problem radically, MiniTool Partition Wizard,professional partition management software, is recommended, which is versed in dealing with problems like this. And it provides you three solutions to clean up hard drive.
The first solution is Space Analyzer, which is similar to the above methods. But it is easier for users to operate. The second and third solutions are extending partition and upgrading to a larger hard drive, respectively. Only the last two methods can radically solve the problem.
Free up Disk Space with MiniTool Partition Wizard
MiniTool Partition Wizard provides 3 solutions to clean hard drive and you can choose one according to your need.
1. Space Analyzer Feature
This feature is free for computer users. What you need to do is to download the MiniTool Partition Wizard and follow the following guide.
Step 1: Download MiniTool Partition Wizard and launch it to get its main interface. And then click Space Analyzer on the toolbar.
Step 2: Select the partition that you want to clean up to scan.
Step 3: Choose a file in Tree View, File View, or Folder View to delete.
Mac cd ripper software amplifier. Attention:
- The Space Analyzer feature can also help you to check hard drive space. The files are listed from top to bottom according to the percentages that they take up in hard drive.
- The result can also show you the hidden files and you can delete the files (even the hidden files) that you don’t want.
- You could explore the selected file before you delete it to avoid deleting important files mistakenly.
- Click here to obtain file attributes, which can help you to decide whether the files can be deleted.
Compared with the above methods, this solution does actually free up disk space to a certain extent. However, it also can’t help you a lot if all the files in the partition are important for you. So, you need to think of the following two solutions.
2. Extend Partition
If your hard disk has unused space, you can use Extend feature of MiniTool Partition Wizard to extend the disk space of partition to increase the real disk space. The reason why the extend feature of Disk Management is not recommended is that it has many limitations. Click Why Extend Volume Grayed out for more information.
Free up disk space of data partitions (not including system partition):
Free up disk space of system related partition:
Step 1: Install MiniTool Partition Wizard and launch it to get its main interface. And then click Bootable Media on the toolbar.
Step 2: A media type selection window pops up, and then click WinPE-based media with MiniTool plug-in to get another window. And finally choose the media destination.
Attention:
- ISO File: If the boot.iso file can't be burned into the USB flash drive or CD/DVD successfully, you could choose this option, and a boot.iso file is generated. And then you could burn this file to your USB flash drive later.Finally, you can use the drive containing the file to boot your computer.
- USB Flash Drive (This option is recommended): If you have a USB flash drive, you could choose this one, and the boot.iso file will be burned into it directly.
- CD/DVD Writer: If your computer supports recording on CD/DVD, you could choose this one, and the boot.iso file will be burned into it directly.
Step 3: Set the Firmware to make the computer boot from the disk containing the burned boot.iso file.
Enter firmware (The specific entry methods vary from computer model to computer model). And then,navigate to boot page with right arrow key and put Removable Devices (USB)or CD-ROM Drive in the first place of the boot sequence with 'plus' key.
Step 4: Boot the computer to get the following interface. And then wait a few seconds without any operation to get the main interface of Partition Wizard.
Clear Space On Mac
Step 5: When you get the main interface of MiniTool Partition Wizard, Right click the partition that you want to extend, and finally click Extend.
Step 6: A window for adding space pops up. Drag the light blue block to adjust the space size to be added. Finally click OK.
Step 6: Click Apply button on the toolbar to execute the pending operations.
This solution is recommended because it increases the real disk space. Surely, some users may ask what if there is no unused space in the hard disk.Then, you must consider buying a larger hard drive if this situation happens.
3. Buy a Larger Hard Drive for Disk Upgrade
If your hard disk runs out and all data stored in it is very important, you should consider buying a larger hard disk. And then you could migrate OS to the larger drive to make it the new boot disk. And if possible, you could still store data on the original hard drive. Click here for the specific steps of migrating OS from the old hard disk to the new hard disk.
What Is Taking up Space on My Hard Drive FAQ
How Can I Get More Disk Space
Step 1: Press Start button, and then navigate to Settings>System >Storage.
Step 2: Click a disk and then its storage usage will be displayed.
Or you can use MiniTool Partition Wizard to find large files taking up hard drive on Windows 10.
C drive keeps filling up because the following reasons:
- The C drive itself is very small.
- You have installed much software on this drive.
- The system is patched, and all patches are installed on C drive by default.
- Cache junk files are not cleared in time.
- Use Disk Cleanup.
- Uninstall programs you don't need.
- Use Space Analyzer of MiniTool Partition Wizard.
Your Voice
We really want to know whether these methods can solve your problem, so please leave a comment to let us know it. If these methods can't help you, please leave a comment to describe your problem in detail so that we can help you. You also can email to [email protected] for help. Expecting your good news.
You won’t regret cleaning pools of junk files from OS X El Capitan since cleaning Mac hard drive is a prolific activity and basic start of Mac optimization. However, if you look deeper into OS X El Capitan disk you will actually find difficult to identify between useful and junk files. Since looking and identifying junk files is confusing you might end up removing important files. This would be a sure short disaster, which is why you should be ensuring a complete updated backup of the Mac hard drive running OS X El Capitan. 10.11 or to reclaim Mac hard drive spaces, remove junk files, etc. try Mac cleaner software which is available free.
Free Up Disk Space Mac
Before you launch cleaning operation on Mac OS X El Capitan, right-click on the Time Machine icon from top – left of the menu bar and select BACK UP NOW. Wait for some-time so that Time Machine application performs full backup of your OS X El Capitan hard drive.
Now gather your strength and start Mac cleaning with.
How To Free Up Hard Drive Space Mac
Emptying Trash on OS X El Capitan
You know by pressing “Command + Shift + Option + Delete” keys, you can clean out all the files from the Trash without the use of mouse and its right click. This is helpful when you are sure that no important files exist to be resorted back from the trash. Otherwise manually take a tour of your trash folder so that you can restore important files back to their location and proceed with permanent deletion of files from the trash.
Which of the above trash looks cleaner and better on El Capitan? You decide.
Clean all unwanted files from Download folder
You might be busy in downloading the best Mac apps or videos for OS X El Capitan but did you remember to move all the used DMG and zip archive files to trash? Go to the Download folder and press-hold “Command + I” to get info of Download folder. No surprises, if you are surprised to check out the Size of the folder due to presence of unwanted files. Don’t spare a minute to send all of them to Trash and do empty it for free space collection.
Cleaning iTunes duplicate files
Music files can easily get duplicated in iTunes but don’t worry because iTunes can help you find them for removal. It’s very simple, see how: Launch iTunes << Click View << Click ShowDuplicateItems. The iTunes application will list up all the duplicate music files by name, artists or group items. To remove the duplicate files from the hard drive you first need to uncheck the original files and keep checked all the duplicate items. Now click on Edit from iTunes menu bar and click Delete. This is how to you says GOODBYE to duplicate files on iTunes using OS X El Capitan or below versions.
Let me share with you that there is an otherwise better solution to remove iTunes, iPhoto, iMovies, iWork and Aperture duplicate files by using Smart Finder application. Though small, it’s a helpful application that eliminates all kinds of duplicate files from OS X.
Cleans caches safely from El Capitan
There are pros and cons of removing old & news caches from Mac hard drive. The plus part is that your Mac OS X gets good amount of hard drive spaces by removal of large stockpile of caches. If your Mac hard drive is dying on free spaces, giving you hiccups or freezing at the best part of your OS X computing then you shall always go ahead to clean this culprit knows by the name – CACHES. Additionally, when your Mac hard drive have good amount of free spaces it will never ever disappoint you with the error message “Your startup disk is almost full” You need to make more space available on your startup disk by deleting files.
My recommendation is to register Stellar Speedup Mac utility for cleaning out caches from the OS X El Capitan home folder. This tool reaches to the deeper location of the hard drive where mouse cursor may not reach. Run this tool now and you will clean all the junks (including logs, unwanted language files, binaries, extensions and system junks) from the hard drive. After the use of Stellar Speedup Mac software all you will be left with a better and faster OS X El Capitan.
Coming back to the minus part of deleting the caches is some of the OS X apps, mostly browsers may behave slower than before. But don’t worry since creation of new and fresh caches will soon fill up the void.
Uninstalling useless application
Mac hard drive cleaning is incomplete without uninstallation of unwanted freeware, shareware, widgets and plugins. Show your Mac OS X that you care for its cleanliness and remove all sorts of useless and unused software to a location they deserve the most i.e. TRASH. Let me also remind you again to empty the trash.
Backup Mac OS X and fresh install OS X
Some misery of slowness never ends which is why you should go for fresh installation of the OS X El Capitan. Though technical, but simple procedure of cleaning an old copy of sluggish and freezing Mac and replacing it with new one. This post best describes the clean installation of OS X El Capitan. Be prepared for an OS X performance evolution and leave me your thoughts.