How to clear space on Mac quickly. There are lots of ideas below for freeing up disk space below, but if you are in a hurry and you don't need a lot of space, or if you aren't too bothered about. No matter which drive your Mac has, let’s look at how to erase your Mac’s free space. Erase your free space. One way to securely erase free space on your Mac hard drive is to use the CleanMyMac X Shredder module. Though the main app is paid, this particular tool is 100% free to use.
The space taken by VM on Mac disk mostly belongs to operating system, programs and files in Windows. To manage Windows storage go to Windows Settings System Storage. Enable Storage Sense to allow Windows automatically free up disk space. To free up space manually click 'Free up space now'. How to check the free space on your startup disk. Even if your Mac hasn’t warned you that the startup disk is almost full, you should regularly check how much free space you’ve got left so you can fix any problems as they develop. Here’s the easiest way to check the free space on your Mac: Click the Apple logo in the top-left corner of.
Clean up your dev environment you filthy animal!
Ilove cleaning software? PLZ! Remove duplicates, find old OS cruft etc. But it never cleans a development machine as I can.
Sure, for general maintenance, nothing beats CleanMyMac. But once a year, developers should run through a few manual commands, because auto-cleaners won’t know how to take care of a developer machine.
Before we start, let’s look at how much “Free Space” you’re starting with:
Mine is reporting 132.2 GB before cleaning. Time to get started!
Mac Homebrew Users
This one usually shaves off hundreds of megs of data. Update, upgrade, and then clean up those files you’re not going to use.
Update then remove old formulae and their folders:
You might have used brew prune in the past, but that has been deprecated. Cleanup handles this for you!
General Brew Maintenance
Brew is a complicated system, and no one knows it better than the maintainers. So you can run brew doctor and get some additional chores you could take care of to have it run properly.
Git Users
Git is great, but it’s not hard to leave a bunch of merged branches laying around on your local machine! Those branches aren’t useful anymore, and sometimes make naming conflicts for future branches.
You can remove all the merged branches from a single project with this command:
WOW, what a mouthful for only one project! Let’s make it worse. ?
This code will CD into all folders in the current working directory, and then run the command to clean merged branches for each!
JavaScript Developers
Delete OLD `node_modules` embedded in projects
The following command finds all node_modules folders older than 120 days and removes them. This does mean you will have to npm i or yarn again in those older projects. This is usually a huge cleanup!
Removes all node_modules folders older than 4 months:
If you’re feeling quite aggressive, you can just clear out ALL node_modules folders and re-install as needed, by removing the mtime flag.
Removes all node_modules folders:
Remove old versions of Node
Remove old versions of Node. This varies depending on your Node manager. I use ’n’ so it’s easy for me. Consult uninstall for your specific version manager.
Using n?List all versions of node + your installed ones withn lsand then remove any withn rm <version>.
Using nvm?List your installed versions withnvm lsand then remove any withnvm uninstall <version>.
Using asdf?List your installed versions withasdf list nodejsand then remove any withasdf uninstall nodejs <version>.
Ruby Developers
Clean up old versions of Gems with the cleanup command. If you’re worried, you can see the results first with “dryrun”.
Then when you are confident, you can remove the “dryrun” param and run it for real.
Remove old versions of Ruby
This depends specifically on your Ruby version manager. We’ll do two popular versions to help you out.
Using rbenv?List your installed versions withrbenv versionsand then remove any withrbenv uninstall <version>.
Using rvm?List your installed versions withrvm listand then remove any withrvm uninstall <version>.
Xcode Developers
Xcode loves to cache things all over your machine, and some of these are hundreds of megs. Time to clean them up, and if you need to rebuild them again, no worries!
Clean up CocoaPod caches:
Delete old Xcode Simulators:
Clean up various archives, logs, and derived data folders:
Check out your connected device info in ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/iOS Device Logs/ and delete anything for old iOS devices you’ve connected.
Docker
You can remove all volumes not used by at least one container. Because… why would you want those?!
This might be huge or it might remove nothing. Worth a run right!?
Remove unused local volumes
RESULTS?!
Don’t forget to empty your trash and check on how we did!
30 GIGS! pulled off my machine! How about you?
Your success is probably vastly different, but I’d love to know. Comment or tweet at me your results, and any other developer spots you recommend we clean! I’ll be happy to add your advice to the article.
Gant Laborde is Chief Technology Strategist at Infinite Red, published author, adjunct professor, worldwide public speaker, and a mad scientist in training. Clap/follow/tweet or visit him at a conference.
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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.
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'.
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.
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:
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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.
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?
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.
Freeing Up Space On Mac El Capitan
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.
Freeing Space On Mac Startup Disk
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!