Apple sold a record 6.5 million Macbooks in Q3 2021 – 10% higher than the previous year. With the Pro now coming with a minimum of 256GB SSD computer storage and offering up to 2 TB on certain models, one thing is clear. They’ve realized more storage is needed.
We wonder how many of those millions of Macbook buyers replaced theirs because they had too much junk in their metaphorical trunks? Freeing up Mac storage space is a great way to put off that hefty investment potentially for another few years.
Let’s take a look at 5 ways to free up storage on your Mac.
- Work Out What the Problem Is
You need to check the storage space on your Mac before you get into tidying it up. Check out https://setapp.com/ for how to do that. Often it’s the ‘Other’ section that takes up tons of space and is hard to identify.
Not all junk hiding on your system is easy for a non-professional to find. Old folders and background apps can bring your Mac to a halt but be super hard to track down. A great option is to use a specialist app that finds the junk and tunes up your Mac.
Some of these will do a superficial tidy-up for free and then allow you to download a premium version for a thorough trawl of your Mac. They then guide you through the clean-up process, meaning you don’t have to worry that it’s deleting vital files without your knowledge.
Some of them also come with anti-virus, pop-up blockers, and other useful extensions for your browser. By running a Mac cleaner regularly, you can keep it firing on all cylinders for as long as possible.
- Use Built-In Tools
All Macs come with built-in software to optimize storage.
You can access them via:
- About This Mac > Storage > Manage
Look for the lightbulb icon with recommendations. Its main suggestion is usually to transfer files stored on your Mac onto iCloud. Everyone can get 5GB of free storage and you can upgrade for a monthly fee to 50GB, 200GB, or up to 2TB of space.
It can transfer bulky files such as photos, videos, iMessages, and files onto iCloud. You can set it to transfer them automatically, meaning that very little is actually stored on your Mac. You can also use hardware storage, such as a flash drive or external hard drive if you’d rather keep your data off the cloud.
Another handy tool is Empty Trash Automatically. If you turn this on, it will automatically clear out your Trash every 30 days.
The Reduce Clutter feature allows your Mac to scan the system. It’ll find any big files that are clogging up your memory but are no longer needed. The cool thing about this feature is that you need to review its findings before you delete anything.
You simply manually go through the list and select what you want it to delete and keep.
- Use ‘Optimize Storage’
Did you know that every episode of The Office you ever binge-watched on iTunes is probably sitting taking up space on your hard drive right now?
Videos take up a humungous amount of space, even with the latest tech. iTunes will let you download them again whenever you want, so there’s no reason to let them hang out on your machine.
Head over to Optimize Storage and select ‘Optimize’. You’ll see a message telling you that movies and shows you’ve already watched will be automatically deleted. You can update that later, but it’s hard to imagine why you’d want to.
Making this one simple change could free up a huge swathe of storage and get your Mac purring again.
- Remove Junk Applications
It’s easy to build up a huge amount of apps that you used for a bit and got bored of. Most of us are not super diligent about clearing these out.
Open Finder and click Applications to see a full list of every app on your system. Grab those apps you simply never use and drag them into the Trash. Simple as that.
You can also do this through Launchpad. Like on an iPhone OS, hold the cursor down on an icon until they all start shaking. The X symbol will appear next to the app, and you can click it to delete it.
Don’t forget to empty the Trash to complete the transaction.
One extra word of advice. While these are the methods recommended by the manufacturer, they won’t clear away every scrap of the app. Apps like to spread themselves out and hang out in various parts of the system.
You can manually trawl through, deleting all files from application support libraries and caches. Or for simplicity, you can get a Mac cleaner to do the job for you.
- Clear Out iTunes iPhone/iPad Backups
Do you use iTunes to back up your iPhone or iPad to your Mac? Chances are there are large backup files sitting there taking up potentially hundreds of GB.
Deleting them can be tricky. You’ll need to find them first and their location varies depending on your OS. You’ll need to track down the Backup folder either in iTunes or through Finder.
If you need the backups, copy the entire folder to an external hard drive.
Maximize Your Mac Storage Space
Apple makes some of the sleekest computer hardware out there. Enjoy it to the full by maximizing your Mac storage space. Use the in-built tools to clear out as much junk as you can find.
But to really trawl and remove those files hidden deep in libraries and caches, we recommend a dedicated Mac cleaner. For a small investment, they will find storage space on your Mac you never knew existed.
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