Dorsum in the days when Macs had hard drives nosotros all had tons of infinite on our Macs, simply the SSDs that feature in our Macs now are more limited in capacity, and high-res video, photos, music and other essential files take up more storage than always.

Running out of space can really hamper your computing: if y'all want your Mac to run apace you lot need to make sure you've got something like 10 per centum of your storage free at all times otherwise your Mac tin can really slow down (read: How to speed upwards a Mac). At worst if you lot don't delete some of the things taking up storage infinite on your Mac you may even find you can't starting time information technology up one twenty-four hours considering the startup disk is total! You lot may be seeing warnings that your start-up disk is almost full - you shouldn't ignore them.

You may also need to clear some infinite on your Mac is if yous are installing an operating system update. When Apple released macOS Big Sur in 2020, for case, a lot of Mac users establish that they didn't have enough costless space to install the new macOS (read: Not enough space for Big Sur). We are anticipating similar bug when macOS Monterey arrives on 25 Oct 2021. Under those circumstances y'all are likely to look for the quick and easy ways to gratuitous up space on a Mac - so finding how to find out what is taking up the infinite on your Mac, and the best way to remove it, will be your priority.

If yous aren't sure how to see how much deejay infinite your Mac has read: How to check how much deejay space y'all have.

In this article we walk you through uncomplicated steps that will aid you identify what is taking upwards space on your Mac, what yous tin and can't delete, the safest way to remove the biggest infinite hogs, and how to manage the storage on your Mac so that yous never run out of infinite once again.

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How to clear space on Mac quickly

There are lots of ideas beneath for freeing upwards disk infinite below, but if y'all are in a hurry and you don't demand a lot of infinite, or if you aren't likewise bothered nigh making sure you don't run out of space again, here are a few things you can exercise right now:

  1. Click on your Downloads binder, open it in the Finder, and select the contents, or any files yous don't need, right-click and choose Move to Bin/Trash.
  2. Open up the Finder and navigate to your Home binder (press Shift-command-H). At present press Control-F to open a new Notice window. Click on the drib downward beside 'Kind' and cull 'Other'. Curlicue downwards until you see 'File Size' and check the box next to it. Click OK. Now in the side by side dropdown choose 'is greater than'. Modify file size to MB and type 100 into the box also that. Now select anything that you don't need that'due south bigger than 100MB and chose Motility to Bin/Trash.Delete files over 100MB
  3. Y'all could prepare a similar search to delete files you haven't opened in the past twelvemonth or longer. Instead of Kind cull Last opened date. Instead of 'is' choose 'before' and change the appointment to a year ago. Select and right-click on files you are sure you won't need again and choose Motility to Bin/Trash.
  4. If you are anything like u.s. your Desktop is a dumping ground. Open the Finder again and choose the Desktop folder. Sort by Size and delete anything you don't demand that'south particularly large. Alternatively sort by Kind to quickly locate all the Screenshots (which will be PNG files). Select those you want to delete and choose Move to Bin/Trash.Delete from Desktop
  5. Another way to delete screenshots is to go to your Desktop and if y'all haven't already done and so get to the menu and choose View > Apply Stacks (you'll need to have the Desktop selected). Now find your Screenshot folder. Click on information technology to open up it up and and then select equally many Screenshots every bit you are comfortable deleting. Yous can click and drag these to the Trash/Bin. Y'all could do the same with other files on your Desktop (it's where about things end up after all).
  6. At present the last and nigh important pace: Right-click on your Trash/Bin and cull Empty Trash/Empty Bin (we are doing this last every bit we've just added lots to the Trash!)

This might recover a few GB for you, and if that's all you need then task done! But if you need to get a lot more infinite, and if y'all desire to avoid running low on space again then follow the steps below.

How to see what's taking upwards space on Mac

If you are running out of space your Mac could be slowing downwards, which is bad enough, but if you run out of infinite on your Mac you may non fifty-fifty exist able to get-go it up! Before yous get to that stage take a look to see what it taking up the infinite on your Mac because that will determine what you lot should delete.

There are several apps that will testify you which files are taking up large chunks of deejay infinite, or allow you to order files in the Finder based on their size.

Free or inexpensive apps like GrandPerspective and DaisyDisk (£9.99/$9.99, buy it hither) give skillful visual indications while OmniDiskSweeper uses the standard hierarchical file window to show the sizes of every file and folder. CleanMyMac (which costs around £30/$30) shows disk usage as office of its cleanup features. Parallels Toolbox (around £15/$fifteen) also has a Clean Drive tool along with lots of other useful tools.

Withal, before you lot spend any money, information technology'southward really really easy to get an overview of what'southward taking upwardly the space on your Mac.

  1. Click on the Apple logo in the top left.
  2. Cull About This Mac.
  3. Click on the Storage tab and wait while it calculates. Eventually you will encounter various bars indicating how much storage is given to sure things, and how much storage is available.

    Delete Other Storage

  4. Hover over the different bars to see what each represents and how much infinite they are taking upward. For example, in our case yellow was Photos (less than 10GB considering we store them in iCloud, simply yous could take 100GB+ of Photos).

This view shows you how much space certain things are taking up, but how practise you delete the stuff that is taking up the space?

What are System and Other?

We'll beginning with the two biggest culprits, at least in our case: Other and System - and that's likely to be the instance for you too. You lot may be wondering if you can delete Other. That isn't something you can do easily - and nor should you lot. We explain How to delete Other on a Mac in a separate article though.

The aforementioned goes for System. It would be unwise to delete the vast majority of your System files, but there are a few that you can probably exercise without, such as Time Car snapshots, iOS backups, then on. We as well have a separate article about what's in System and what you tin delete.

Tools like CleanMyMac X can help you deal with these Other and Organization files. CleanMyMac is £29.95/$29.95 (here's where you can download CleanMyMac). We too have a circular upwards of the All-time Mac Cleaners in which nosotros expect at a number of alternatives to CleanMyMac including: DaisyDisk, MacBooster, Parallels ToolBox, and MacCleaner Pro.

How Apple helps you save space

Moving on from Other and System we are left with a number of things nosotros can delete from our Macs - and Apple makes it actually easy to do so.

Click on the Apple logo > About This Mac > Storage and now click on Manage.

Storage Mac

On the left of this window Apple shows yous how much space is attributed to the various unlike things on your Mac. Aside from Organization and Other, which are greyed out, you can click on any of these and get to options that assistance you delete any storage hogs. We'll become through each of these options in the sections below.

Storage Recommendations

In the middle of the window Apple offers y'all Recommendations to aid you lot regain some of the space on your Mac. You can brand diverse tweaks including choosing to store files in iCloud, optimising storage, setting your Bin/Trash to empty automatically, or reviewing files to reduce ataxia. Nosotros'll explain each of these options in the sections beneath.

Store in iCloud

We call back that the option to Store in iCloud should be your starting time port of phone call if you want to repossess lots of infinite on your Mac. Apple's actually upgraded iCloud - it'due south now iCloud+ and includes a number of additional features, but the price hasn't gone up. Read: iCloud becomes iCloud+, with range of new features.

The Store in iCloud option gives you the option of storing files in iCloud. Information technology's a great pick if you have express storage on your Mac: get yourself a nice chunk of storage in the cloud and keep everything you need there. If you don't mind paying for it this is a great way to extend the storage bachelor to y'all.

Apple gives users 5GB of iCloud storage for costless, simply that's not going to to be of much help here. Apple offers various amounts of storage on a subscription basis, there should be something to suit you lot.  The prices for iCloud storage are as follows:

  • 5GB: gratis
  • 50GB: 79p/99c a calendar month
  • 200GB: £2.49/$2.99 a month
  • 2TB: £6.99/$ix.99 a month

We should also mention that Apple tree has a bundle offering, known as Apple tree One, where y'all tin can get iCloud storage as office of a bargain that includes Apple Music, Apple tree Television set+ and Apple Arcade. Prices first at £14.95/$14.95 a month. Read Should I get Apple One? for more than information.

If you spend some money on iCloud, and shop your desktop and documents and all your photos there, y'all can salvage a huge chunk of storage and an even bigger bonus is the fact that you'll be able to admission those files and photos on whatsoever Apple device you ain or by logging onto iCloud with your Apple ID.

Here's what y'all need to practice to make space on your Mac by moving files and photos to iCloud:

  1. Click on the Store in iCloud selection (via About This Mac > Storage > Manage).
  2. This opens a window asking you to cull what you want to store in iCloud. This can be all the files on your Mac Desktop and your Documents binder and all your Photos. Select both.
  3. Click on Shop in iCloud.

Use iCloud

If you want to really cut back on the corporeality of space taken up by your photos we'll discuss some more than changes yous can make below in our reduce photo library section.

Optimise Storage

Another really easy mode to finish your storage getting clogged upwards on your Mac is to turn on Optimise Storage.

Optimise Storage is Apple tree'southward next recommendation after Store in iCloud.

If you turn on Optimise Storage information technology will delete TV shows or films that yous've watched and it old electronic mail attachments volition exist removed. You needn't be agape of losing either of these things considering the emails volition withal be stored on the e-mail server anyhow, and the shows you had purchased from Apple'south iTunes Shop can always be downloaded once more for free.

To choose this option go to Well-nigh My Mac > Storage > Manage and click on Optimise Storage.

Once you take chosen this choice your storage will be optimised automatically.

Empty Trash Automatically

Nosotros already mentioned emptying the trash as one of the quick means to get more than storage on your Mac.

The easiest way to empty your trash is to right-click on the trash can icon and cull Empty Trash/Empty Bin.

All the same, y'all can also click on Bin/Trash in the side-bar on the left of your About My Mac > Storage > Manage window and delete it there.

It'due south really good exercise to empty your Trash regularly though and Apple has a nifty way to automate this action.

If you choose Apple's Empty Trash Automatically recommendation it will empty files out of your Trash (or Bin if y'all are in the UK) after they have been there for 30 days. Hither'due south how to set it upwards:

  1. Switch this selection on in Almost My Mac > Storage > Manage.
  2. Cull the Empty Trash Automatically option.
  3. Click Turn On…
  4. You will see an alert asking if you lot're sure you want to erase Trash automatically. Information technology should be pretty condom as 30 days is a long time to realise you lot didn't mean to delete something, so we recommend yous click Turn On.

How to free space on a Mac: Empty trash automatically

Reduce Clutter

This is Apple's final Recommendation plant in About My Mac > Storage > Manage.

Reduce Clutter volition review the content of your Mac and make information technology easy for you to delete files you don't demand.

TIP: Rather than open files or documents to see what you are considering deleting, select the file and press the space bar to see a preview.

Click on Review Files and you will be taken to a pane that shows tabs for Big Files, Downloads, Unsupported Apps, Containers and a File Browser (depending on which version of macOS you have). This is actually the same view yous would come across if you clicked on Documents in the side-bar on the left.

We don't have whatever Big Files on our MacBook Pro, but if nosotros did nosotros'd exist able to see them here. Yous tin determine whether to delete them or not based on the data provided which includes when you accessed them last and their size.

Next pick is Downloads. Here you'll see the files y'all accept downloaded from the internet. Every bit with the trash it'south a practiced idea to delete the contents of this folder from time to time as it is surprising how much space a few downloads can take upward.

To delete what's in your Downloads right at present select the files yous want to remove and cull Delete. The skilful thing about deleting Downloads this way is that information technology won't just motility them to your Trash. If you delete straight from the Downloads folder you will need to Empty Trash too.

If you have any Unsupported Apps you volition come across them in that section. Yous might see onetime 32-bit apps here, for example.

We'll skip Containers every bit it's unlikely that in that location volition be anything in that view for you to delete.

In File Brower yous tin quickly access folders for Pictures, Desktop, Music, Movies, Documents and so on.

How to free space on a Mac: Reduce clutter

Those are the steps that Apple tree offers to help you manage the storage available on your Mac. We'll now go in to a bit more detail on some of the other ways to save infinite, of which at that place are many.

Reduce your Mac photo library

If you take a big photograph library you might be thinking that y'all could save some space by deleting the hundreds of blurry or not-so-good photos. While in that location are apps that will offer to delete duplicate photos on your Mac (such as Photos Duplicate Cleaner or MacPaw's Gemini 2, the afterwards of which offers to remove indistinguishable files from your Mac.)

Still, there is a much less effort way to reduce the amount of photos on your Mac: move them to iCloud.

We already touched on Photos above, when we mentioned that if you choose the Store in iCloud choice in Near This Mac > Storage > Manage you tin choose to store your photos in iCloud.

The do good of using iCloud Photo Library is that any photos you upload to your Mac in the future also appear on your other devices: iPhone, iPad and so on.

Our Photograph library (prior to turning on iCloud Photograph Library) was 96GB we started off by paying for the 200GB of space Apple offers. Months afterward we had upgraded to the full 2TB as we were storing all our documents, desktop, photos and more than in iCloud.

  1. You might have turned on iCloud Photo Library, only if you oasis't already yous could do then in the Photos app. Become to Photos > Preferences.
  2. Check the box abreast iCloud Photos.
  3. This is important: Select Optimise Mac Storage to make sure that your full-resolution photos are replaced with low-res versions (you tin can e'er download the full-res version if you need it).

With that setting your library should eventually shrink as the high res versions of your images are switched for low-res versions. Merely note that you will also get low res versions of all the images you take on all of your devices, then information technology'southward possible that you lot may non save a lot of infinite.

Beware that if you delete photos from your Mac they volition be deleted from iCloud too: iCloud is non a way to back up your photos so that you can delete them from your Mac.

If you want to remove your photo library to free up space look at our next suggestion.

Motion photos to external storage

Another option is to complimentary up space on your Mac by moving your photo library to an external hard drive. We have a divide article that describes how to move your photograph library from your Mac to an external drive, merely we'll summarise the steps below.

  1. Quit Photos.
  2. Copy your Photos Library to an external bulldoze. (To save having to delete them again afterwards, press the Control key when you drag the files over so that they are moved, with the original files automatically deleted, rather than copied.)
  3. One time the files have finished copying, hold down the Pick/Alt key while starting up Photos.
  4. In Photos select Photos > Preferences and in Full general cull Use as System Photo Library.
  5. If y'all have iCloud Photo Library enabled, the Mac may get busy as information technology works out which photos reside in iCloud, only if should somewhen complete without requiring a massive information transfer.

Motion your music library

Your Music library (iTunes in older versions of macOS) might be another candidate for re-claiming disk space, especially if you spent a lot of time importing CDs many years ago. If your iTunes library holds a few GB worth of music y'all accept a few options.

You can re-create the whole thing from your Music directory to an external hard drive and point Music/iTunes to it from Preferences. That's dandy if your Mac is a desktop model, but not platonic if it's a notebook - unless yous have a NAS drive to which you connect wirelessly. We have a separate tutorial on how to motility your iTunes library to an external hard drive.

Another option is to pay £21.99/year to subscribe to iTunes Match. Here'south how to prepare iTunes Friction match. Note: If you have an Apple Music membership, yous become all of the benefits of iTunes Match, plus admission to the entire Apple tree Music catalogue. So you don't need both.

Once you lot've prepare information technology upward, iTunes Match allows y'all to admission all the music in your music Library on Apple'due south servers, meaning y'all don't have to have information technology stored locally at all. You'll demand to be continued to the cyberspace in guild to play music, merely other than that, it's just like using Music/iTunes with locally stored music.

And, as a bonus, if you decide at a later date that you want to download your music from iTunes Match, y'all become 256-chip AAC files which are probably of amend quality than the ones yous had stored on your Mac.

The final option hither is to subscribe to Apple Music, Apple's service that for £9.99 a month gives yous access to its whole music library, so bold that all the music you enjoy is on iTunes you lot can delete all your music from your Mac and merely stream the music from Apple Music instead.

If at a later on date yous decide non to subscribe anymore, you will always exist able to download for free any tracks y'all bought from the iTunes Music Store before y'all took out the subscription, but note that unless you lot have iTunes Friction match yous won't exist able to download tracks that y'all uploaded to your iTunes library yourself, so don't throw out those CDs just yet.

Remove unwanted apps

In that location is an pick in Mac > Storage > Manage to remove unsupported apps, but what about the other apps yous have installed only don't use and don't need?

Deleting apps is pretty simple on a Mac - normally - and nosotros embrace information technology in particular here: How to Uninstall Mac Apps.

  • You can either delete an app from the Applications folder in the Finder: right-click on the app and chose Movement to Bin/Trash.
  • Or you can printing F4 to open up Launchpad, find the app, press Alt/Choice and hover over on the app. Click on the x to delete it.

However, some macOS apps take preferences (plist) and application support files and these can exist in a number of places on your Mac. In those cases the methods above won't delete all the associated files and libraries associated with an app.

If you want to make absolutely sure that every trace of an app is gone so y'all can try an app that deletes apps thoroughly.

Some major apps include an uninstaller. For example, you'll observe one of these in the Additional Tools folder of Microsoft Office. Sometimes an app's installer doubles as an uninstaller. But the lack of a dedicated uninstaller in macOS is a serious omission.

Fortunately there are a number of third-party options. AppCleaner (free, download from the Mac App Store here), AppDelete ($7.99) and AppZapper ($12.95) are skillful options, as are CleanMyMac X, Uninstaller and CleanApp.

Some other tip is to make sure you quit apps running in the background. Quitting apps that have been open for several days or more, or even restarting your Mac completely on a regular basis, volition also help costless up disk infinite.

Applications create temporary files to store data and the longer they run without quitting, the bigger those files become. When yous quit the app, the cache files are deleted and the disk infinite returned.

Remove indistinguishable files

Identifying and dumping duplicate files is another good way of freeing up disk space. Gemini costs £fifteen.95 on the Mac App Shop (in the United states y'all can buy it on the Mac Store for $19.99) and allows you to scan your Mac for duplicate files so you tin dump one copy.

How to free space on a Mac: Gemini

How much of your precious hard drive space is existence taken upwards by indistinguishable files? While hard drives may be getting bigger and cheaper, Apple'southward management is that of smaller, faster SSD drives. The problem is that these have smaller capacities and then a higher level of filing discipline is essential.

There are a number of reasons why y'all end upwardly with so many dupe files. When y'all add songs to iTunes, if y'all have 'Copy files to iTunes Media binder when adding to library' checked in the preferences, you continue the original. Instant duplication. A couple of thousand high quality songs and that's anything up to 10GB hard bulldoze space wasted. And that doesn't include dupes within iTunes.

If you utilise Apple tree Mail, remember that all attachments reside in Mail'due south ain download binder. This tin be some other source of duplication.

More than generic apps utilize various strategies and criteria to find duplicates and requite you control over which ones to go rid of. Accept a look at Tidy Upward ($29.99) or Singlemizer (£9.99/$9.99 on the Mac App Store).

Remove extra languages

macOS supports a range of languages, being localised for more 25 languages all of which are included automatically during installation. Get to System Preferences > Linguistic communication & Region; here languages can be put into preferred club making it piece of cake to switch betwixt them.

Many major applications support multiple languages too, using the guild from Language & Text to select 1 if the app doesn't back up your main linguistic communication. The problem is that if you only want to apply one or ii languages, macOS and many of your apps are bloated with all the others.

If you want to delete extra linguistic communication files that you know y'all won't exist needing, go to the Resources folder and look for folders ending in .lproj. Each of those folders volition include a language file. You lot should be able to trash these folders without whatever bug.

Remove unwanted lawmaking

Getting rid of unwanted code is another deejay-saving exercise.

Monolingual (donation requested) lets you remove specific architectures from macOS forth with specific languages. While information technology tin can claw back huge swathes of difficult drive space, it can also return your Mac unbootable if you're non careful. Utilise with circumspection.

How to free space on a Mac: Monolingual

Use deject storage infinite

We've discussed iCloud already, but in that location are other cloud storage options.

Deject storage services are great for making files bachelor remotely, but they can too accept upward space on your Mac. Both Dropbox and OneDrive, for example, sync everything yous store in them with your Mac past default - assuming you've installed the Dropbox/ OneDrive app.

If you only take the default 2GB storage bachelor for free from Dropbox, that'southward not likewise much of a trouble. But Microsoft gives Part 365 subscribers 1TB of infinite free, and so if yous utilise that to shop lots of files, you could find yourself running out of disk space very chop-chop. The same is true if y'all pay for more space on Dropbox.

In both cases, however, yous can choose to sync just files and folders you specify.

In Dropbox, click on the carte bar item, then click the cog and then Preferences. Click the Account tab, then click Change Settings. At present untick the files and folders you don't desire to sync with your Mac.

In OneDrive, click the menu bar item, so Preferences. Click Cull Folders, then Choose Folders, then Choose Folders to sync. Untick folders, or click the expand arrow to admission private files and untick those.

An alternative would be to sign up for more iCloud storage, as we mentioned earlier.

Archive or fill-in

You might be thinking I demand the infinite, only I don't want to delete annihilation! If you actually are the proverbial data squirrel, hither are a few uncomplicated suggestions:

Annal any files you're unlikely to demand regularly. Ctrl-click on a folder and select the compress option. (Here's more info on how to zip Mac files.) The infinite saved will vary according to the type of file being archived: JPEGs and DMGs, for instance, are unlikely to shrink very much. Once created, athenaeum can either remain on your Mac or exist saved to an external bulldoze.

Finally, if you practise take the decision to delete files or folders, always back them upwards first.