How To Free Up Hard Drive Space Mac

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How To Free Disk Space On Mac
How Can I Get More Disk Space
How To Free Up Hard Drive Space Mac Book Pro

This means that downloading the two-hour Hugo, for example, uses up a whopping 6GB to 7GB of drive space: roughly 1.9GB for the SD version and another 4.3GB or 5.2GB for the HD version (720p. How to check what's taking up 'Other' storage on Mac. To discover what's taking up space on your hard drive (including in the 'Other' category): Open the Apple menu; Choose About This Mac; Click Storage; Here you'll see an overview of all the available storage on your hard drive, along with the space taken up by various file types.

Disk space is the space that we place all of our information, pretty much your programs, apps, user preferences, documents, videos, music, and so much more. At present, the Mac still has a limited hard drive that can be filled up easily. In case you fail to efficiently clean your hard drive, you will sooner or later receive the “Your disk is almost full” error. So how to clear disk space on Mac?

Although you can free up space by removing files and elements that you have downloaded, it will not get you far. Remember that majority of the space on your Mac can be freed up by clearing temporary files, language files, attachments, duplicate files, or emptying the content of the Trash cans.

Here are a variety of ways on how to free up disk space on Mac, just keep on reading to learn more.

Article GuidePart 1. How Do I Free Up Disk Space on Mac? (Quickest Way)Part 2. How Do I Clear Storage on My Mac When the Disk is Full?Let's Wrap It Up

People Also Read:How to Make Room on Mac Effectively

Part 1. How Do I Free Up Disk Space on Mac? (Quickest Way)

So, how do I free up disk space on my Mac to make it run faster? There are quite a few ways to really clear out your disk space, and all of them can be quite a bit of trouble or time-consuming.

iMyMac PowerMyMac has a variety of tools that you can use to free up disk space on your Mac. The software is dependable and highly-efficient. It also boasts an array of tools to help clean unwanted files as well as optimize your Mac. Let us take a close look at some of the tools that you can use to free up disk space on your device.

Master Scan. This tool is used to clean up the system junks on your Mac such as the System Cache, System Logs, Application Cache, User Logs, Localization and more to optimize overall performance while also cleaning up unwanted files to free up disk space. It reduces the size of your photo library on your Mac by cleaning up the photo cache. If you want to delete local copies of your email attachments and downloads that were saved in the disk space, this is a must-have tool.
Large & Old Files. With this tool, it helps you find files that occupy a certain disk space or any outdated files that eat up precious disk space.
Uninstaller. This tool is used to easily remove entire applications on your device especially those that you seldom use.

Duplicate Finder. This function allows you to erase files forever so that you can protect your personal privacy.
Similar Image Finder. This tool functions as a photo manager that helps find and clean similar photos on your device.

How to Free Up Disk Space on Mac with PowerMyMac?

Let's take Master Scan as an example, follow the simple steps below to clean up your Mac for freeing space with PowerMyMac:

Free download PowerMyMac, install and launch it on your Mac.
Select Master Scan module.
Begin to scan your Mac to look for junk files.
View and choose the files you want to delete.
Press the Clean button to remove your unwanted files.

Part 2. How Do I Clear Storage on My Mac When the Disk is Full?

Since you have been asking – how to clear disk space on Mac? Let us now take a close look at some of these methods to clear up space on your device. If you don't want to do these manually, all of them can be done easily by PowerMyMac.

1. Remove Duplicate or Similar Files

Duplicate or similar files are notorious for eating up most of your hard drive space. One of the initial tasks that you should focus on is to remove these files, especially if you have been using your computer for a long time.

2. Empty the Trash Cans

The Trash on your device is the equivalent to the Recycle Bin on Windows. Instead of deleting files permanently from within the Finder, they are moved to the Trash so you have the option to restore them later in case you change your mind. If you want to completely remove these files to free up space, you must empty your Trash. Since Macs have several trash cans, you must empty several.

How to clear disk space on Mac by emptying the main Trash? Simply CTRL+click or right-click on the Trash icon that you can find at the right bottom corner of the dock and select Empty Trash. This action will delete all the files you sent to the Trash from the Finder. Remember that iMovie, iPhoto, and Mail have separate trash cans. In case you have deleted media files from these applications, you must empty their trash cans.

3. Uninstall Unused Applications

How to clear disk space on Mac by removing unused apps? Generally, all applications that you installed on your Mac can take up space. It is recommended to uninstall those that you no longer need:

Simply open a Finder window and choose Applications in the sidebar.
Once you find the icon of the application, drag-and-drop to the Trash on your dock.

Remember that some of these applications might be eating up a lot of space. To distinguish which applications are taking up most space:

Open a Finder window and choose Applications.
Tap on “Show items in a list” knob on the toolbar.
Tap on the Size heading to categorize the installed applications based on size.

4. Remove Any Downloads

Some have downloaded files from messengers, web browsers and mail. If you download files from the Internet, you can find them in the Downloads folder.

Generally, it is found in this location:

/Macintosh HD/Users/Current User/Downloads

Based on statistics, an average Mac user can end up with 0.5 GB weekly in the Downloads folder. In most cases, all files in the Downloads folder are left in disarray and eat up precious disk space. It is recommended to sort out the files based on size, date or kind to sift out the unnecessary ones from those that you still need.

5. Clearing the Cache

The cache file is a temporary data file created by browsers, applications, and other programs to allow your Mac to function faster. When cache files are removed, they are recreated once an application is used again. Nevertheless, you might not be using some applications and their leftovers are still in the Cache folder which occupies a lot of disk space. This is the reason why it is recommended to regularly clear the cache.

The cache files are typically stored in the Library folders that you can find in the following locations:

/Library/Caches
~/Library/Caches

In the /Library/Caches, you will find temporary files produced by the system. Generally, these files will not take up too much space. Nevertheless, in the ~/Library/Caches folder, it stores many junk files that are produced when running applications. As a result, this folder increases in size over time.

How to clear disk space on Mac by clearing the caches? Generally, the Library folder is hidden on macOS as Apple. You can access it with these steps.

Open the Finder window
On the Menu, tap on Go > Go to Folder
In the dialog box, key in ~/Library/Cache and tap on Go

6. Remove Language Files

The applications in Mac include language files for every language being supported. You have the option to switch the system language of your Mac and start using the apps in that specified language right away. Nevertheless, most are likely to use one language, thus the language files only take up space.

7. Remove Old iPhone Backups

For those who often sync their iPhone with iTunes, the application produces several backup copies on your device. Over time, these files can eat up precious disk space since they usually include music, movies and other large files. You can find these old backup copies by opening iTunes > Go to the Menu Bar > iTunes > Preferences.

You will see a list of all the backups that iTunes managed to produce while working with your device. Once you made up your mind that they are no longer need, you can safely remove them but make sure they are in iCloud.

An alternative approach in finding and removing iOS backups is to go to:

~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup

8. Cleaning up Large Mail Attachments

If you are using the Mail application in macOS with the same email account for a long time, there is a high chance that large email attachments are taking up a large chunk of space on your drive.

The initial step is to change the Mail settings to not download any attachments automatically to help save space or perform a cleanup task to eliminate them. For those who are using Gmail, you can designate limits on the number of messages synced over IMAP by default to only display the last few thousands instead of everything.

Go to Mail > Preferences > Accounts > Account Information.
Change the drop-down for “Download attachments” to either “Non” or “Recent”.

Altering this setting will allow the Mail app to not use up any more space but this will not deal with the issue of attachments from emails that were already been downloaded.

How do I free up disk space on my Mac by removing these attachments? Just do it manually with the following steps.

Open Mail and tap on the folder that you want to find and remove any attachments.
Utilize the Sort by Size option to find large-sized messages
Tap on the Message and select Message > Remove attachments from the menu bar. Remember that this will not remove the attachment from the mail server if you are using IMAP.
Repeat these steps on all messages that you want to delete attachments from.

9. Clean up Photos

Obviously, if you have a lot of photos on your device, they eat up most of your disk space. Essentially, you can choose those that you can remove such as duplicates or copies are photos mistakenly taken.

Once you have deleted the unwanted photos, the next step is to eliminate the files that your system created. In Photos, it is the cache files while for iPhoto, it is the service copies. Understandably, both are difficult to find but there are ways to do so.

The Photos cache includes the iCloud local copies, Faces cache and other elements related to your apps. How to clear disk space on Mac by deleting photos? For macOS versions earlier than Sierra, simply follow these steps:

Open Finder and proceed to your Photos library
CTRL+click your Photos library and choose the “Show Package Contents” option
Access “resources” and proceed to “model resource”

At this point, you will see several folders in the Finder window. The Photos cache rests in these folders, but it can be tricky which ones are safe to remove and what is not. Remember that removing the wrong file can disrupt the overall performance of Photos.

For those who are still using iPhoto, you must find the service copies it produces every time an image is altered. If you are going to work on this task, simply repeat steps 1 and 2 above. Go through the Master, Modified, Original and Preview folders to decide on which photos have original copies that were altered.

Let's Wrap It Up

With the help of these methods obove, you have answers on 'how to clear disk space on Mac' now, and you will gain free space for other important uses. Regular cleanup of any unwanted files or elements will free up space on your Mac as well as fix the “Startup Disk is Full” error.

Although you can clean up your device manually, it generally takes time. With the help of the highly-efficient tools byiMyMac PowerMyMac, you can save time while ensuring that your Mac functions optimally. Feel free to have its free trial below!

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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.)

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.

Warning: If you want to clean up local disk C, you should pay attention to system files (.sys files). These files are related to the operating system. If you delete them mistakenly, the operating system probably doesn't work well.

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.

How to free up hard drive space mac book pro

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.

Note: If you want to free up the disk space of system related partition, you need to use Bootable Media feature first and then to use Extend feature to avoid damage to system files. You should note that the Bootable Media feature is not free. The whole process is shown below.If you just want to free up space of data partition, please use the Free Edition and start from Step 5.

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.

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.

Tip: If your computer is laptop computer, which can only be mounted with one hard drive, you should choose to copy all the partitions on the system disk to another hard disk.

What Is Taking up Space on My Hard Drive FAQ

How do you find out what's taking up space 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.

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.

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.

How To Free Disk Space On Mac

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.

How Can I Get More Disk Space

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.

How To Free Up Hard Drive Space Mac Book Pro

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