To free up disk space on your Mac start with simple steps: empty Trash, delete files from the Downloads folder. If there is still not enough storage, then consider deleting large files. They can be found by clicking on About This Mac - Storage - Manage. Here are 8 of the best disk cleaning steps.
Today in 2021, MacBooks are more spacious than ever. The new MacBook Air comes with a 256-GB hard drive. But no amount of storage seems to be enough as the ever-inflating digital media is taking over our hard drives. Cloud servers are only a partial answer to that. They aren’t getting cheaper and consume insane amounts of the world’s electricity. So if you want to take a load off your drive and help the planet, you should teach yourself a couple of storage-keeping tricks. Let’s go.
What’s causing low disk space on your Mac?
- Apr 07, 2016 What’s causing low disk space on your Mac? Before you begin to free up disk space, let’s identify what’s taking it up. From the Apple Menu in the upper left-hand corner of your screen, select About This Mac and then click the Storage tab in the window that opens. You’ll get a handy, color-coded graph that looks like this.
- To free up disk space on your Mac start with simple steps: empty Trash, delete files from the Downloads folder. If there is still not enough storage, then consider deleting large files. They can be found by clicking on About This Mac - Storage - Manage. Here are 8 of the best disk cleaning steps.
Before you begin to free up disk space, let’s identify what’s taking it up. From the Apple Menu in the upper left-hand corner of your screen, select About This Mac and then click the Storage tab in the window that opens. You’ll get a handy, color-coded graph that looks like this:
In the above example, you can see that apps, audio files, and “other” (for details on what this “other” category consists of, look here) are taking the most significant amount of space.
It’s nice to see what’s stored on your Mac, and even nicer to be able to browse the folders that contain the files themselves. Now that you’ve identified what’s on your drive let’s free up some space.
How to increase disk space on your Mac
There are several options here, so let’s go through a few.
1. Remove large and old files
Often the files that end up taking the most space are tucked away in “cold storage” on your computer. These are big movies, photos, or the like that you rarely look at but can’t part with, either. In this case, archiving the files and moving them to an external drive is a good way to free up storage space on your Mac.
Locating huge neglected files can be a pain, but it gets super easy with the CleanMyMac X app. It has a dedicated Large & Old File finder. It will help you find massive files and sort them by size to define the largest ones quickly.
You can download the free version of CleanMyMac X here.
As the name suggests, it finds files that occupy a lot of space on your disk but haven’t been opened for a long time. You can quickly review these files right in the app and decide which ones you want to remove. It’s a really handy feature if you have a lot of heavy stuff piled up.
2. Empty Trash
Review your Trash bin’s contents one last time before you empty it. Press Command and right-click the Trash folder on your Trash icon. Then, click Empty Trash to remove everything.
Use Command-Option-Delete to delete any folder immediately, bypassing Trash.
3. Clean up the Downloads folder
Files love to hide in your Mac’s Downloads folder. Old disk images, random photos, unused extensions, ZIP files… they’re all in there, not making a sound. Hiding. ? Go to Finder and browse what’s sitting in your Downloads, wasting space on your disk. Anything unnecessary can be dragged to the Trash.
4. Delete duplicate folders and files
How many times do we copy or download things twice? Like many users, I would prefer to have a backup twin of my important files. But that often ends up in my files being quadrupled…or what do they call a 4th or 5th copy of the same folder?
To effectively remove duplicate files and make space on Mac, you can use Gemini 2. This is how this app looks.
You can download this little duplicate finder here.
Gemini 2 analyzes potential duplicates by many criteria, not just the name of the file. It searches for:
- Duplicate folders
- Duplicate movies
- Similar images
5. Learn to use Optimized Storage
Optimized Storage is the built-in feature of the macOS. It’s a sorting algorithm that shows different categories of files on your Mac for review and removal.
- Click the Apple Menu > About This Mac > Storage.
- Choose “Manage…”
By far, the most-space demanding of your files will be Applications.
Using the quick tabs above, you will decide what is there you can toss away. Make sure also to check Recommendations (on top of the list). There are a couple more space-saving options there.
6. Uninstall unused applications
If you’re like me, you often try an app “...just to see what it does”. While that’s fun, it frequently results in a slew of forgotten apps. It’s a good practice to set a reminder to review your Applications folder and clean out the ones you no longer use. However, note that simply dragging an app into your Mac’s trash doesn’t eliminate all of its related files.
CleanMyMac X's Uninstaller feature, on the other hand, leaves no leftover pieces behind, which means more available space on your Mac. CleanMyMac X finds every app-related document and file, no matter where it has been tucked away and deletes it from your Mac.
And speaking of setting up a reminder, CleanMyMac’s scheduler will handle that task for you, too. Just tell it how often you’d like to be prompted to give your Mac a good cleaning and leave the rest to the app.
7. Delete your Desktop screenshots
Mac’s Desktop is where you keep screenshots by default. With a feature called “Stacks,” you can organize your Desktop into clearly labeled folders. One of such folders will be Screenshots, which you can later remove in one sweep.
- Go to your desktop.
- Right-click somewhere in the middle of your Desktop.
- Select “Use Stacks”
Now you should see the Screenshots folder with all your screengrabs neatly stuffed inside. Drag this folder to the Trash and empty it.
8. Get rid of system junk
It’s not just your files that are hogging disk space — it’s also useless system files like logs, cache, unused binaries, old iOS backups and installers, and what not. Fortunately, CleanMyMac can find and eliminate them all to make low disk space a thing of the past, at last.
System junk is comprised of:
- User cache files
- Application cache
- Broken downloads
- Unused .DMG installers
As you can see, the 'User cache' category alone can recover about 3 GB of space. So the best way to free up space on Mac is to start with this type of files.
With just a few clicks, you’ll discover what’s where and what’s ripe for deletion. The best way to free up hard drive space is to run CleanMyMac X and wave goodbye to space-hogging files. Don’t worry. You won’t miss them. Hopefully, you managed to clear a lot of disk space — drop by for more Mac housekeeping tips. 😉
To function properly, your computer’s hard drive needs enough space. If you create space on your hard drive, you clean up unused files and fragments of data. Your hard drive might even need to be replaced if it is not large enough to meet your needs. If you use a computer daily, you may notice that your hard drive space has disappeared and wonder, “what is using the space on our hard drive?” The installed programs or saved files in Windows Explorer may not always provide a clear indication of its use.
You can make it out with Windows’ help. You can make sure you have plenty of free disk space on your PC by using the dedicated settings menu in Windows 10. The space utilized on your device and the type of content downloaded will be shown. You can use Storage Sense to automatically delete temporary files, Recycle Bin items, and other items you might not need. Follow these steps to view your internal storage and free up space.
Contents
- 3 What is disk space, exactly?
How to Free Up Disk Space
The lack of sufficient disk space can lead to problems when saving files and slowing down your device. The author will show you how to find out what’s taking up hard drive space, how to free up disk space, and how to make cleanup safer and more efficient by using a reputable cleanup program.
How to clear disk space in Windows and Mac
The simplest way to free up disk space on PCs and Macs is to empty the recycle bin, clean the disk, delete temporary files, uninstall applications, and use a hardware junkware removal cleanup tool.
The garbage generated by many programs can be overwhelming. This makes you forget what it felt like when you bought your computer. What happened to all the free space? The next section tells you how much disk space you have available at present.
You can clear space on your Mac by using the Storage Management feature. You can delete important data or files when you clean out your trash on your own. Is there a similar feature in Windows? The only way to optimize your computer’s performance is to know what files it needs and which are not necessary.
The Avast Cleanup tool removes bloatware, obsolete programs, and old registry entries for outdated programs, but it keeps what you need. Try Avast Cleanup to reduce the time it takes to boot and improve your computer’s performance.
How about manually deleting files on your PC? This guide will guide you through the process. The steps are as follows:
Empty the trash process of cleaning a hard drive typically begins and ends with emptying the trash.
You don’t delete a file when you right-click and choose Delete or when you drag it to the Trash on a Mac. The file can still be restored.
You can let your Recycle Bin or Trash pile up over time if you don’t have a routine that cleans it out regularly. The solution to how to increase disk space is as simple as deleting all the data.
- The Trash on Mac or Recycle Bin on Windows is accessible by right-clicking.
- To empty the recycling bin or trash, click Empty Trash.
There! we are done! Please check the Recycle Bin first before deleting it. You can return to the file’s original location by right-clicking it.
There may be a notice that you may be about to delete a file permanently if the file is a bigger one than your available space on your main hard drive. It will help if you read everything before you make a decision.
Searching for something and not finding it? As a starting point, we should consider the stuff your computer doesn’t need, so let’s tackle the stuff you’re not using at all.
- Use Disk Cleanup
There are many automated ways of deleting things from Windows, including obsolete Windows files and items in the Recycle Bin. The steps are as follows:
- This is the first step. Click Disk Cleanup on your taskbar.
- This is the second step. Then choose a drive to be cleaned.
- Three. You will be able to see how much space you will clear when you use Disk Cleanup. Aside from the Windows ESD Installation Files, none of them are at risk if deleted. This can be left unchecked.
- The fourth step is here. Additionally, you can delete additional files if you select Clean up system files to delete (see step 2), which offers more deletion options.
You can speed up your computer with Disk Cleanup, one of the best ways to clean Windows. Does Mac OS have a similar feature?
You can free up storage space on your Mac by using Mac’s built-in cleanup app, Optimize:
- The first step is taking action. Then click the About This Mac icon in the upper-left corner.
- This is the second step. Click Manage and then Storage.
- This is the third step. The Optimize Storage link can be used to get rid of large files, such as movies and TV shows.
This page allows you to empty the Trash automatically and move files to the Cloud. You can utilize Optimize to free up disk space and make space for new files on your Mac.
- Delete temporary files
If you want to remove temporary files created by Chrome or another browser, you need to do so from the programs themselves. You clear the cache on Mac and PC through the browser’s settings – get to the advanced section of the browser and look for the Clear Cache button. This button is usually adjacent to the button for deleting cookies.
There are numerous ways to increase the size of a cache. To gain more disk space, you can flush out all the data your browser stores automatically on your computer.
- Delete duplicate files
It is possible to handle the copying process manually or use a program that identifies duplicates for you. The use of an app ensures that you do not delete folders with similar names but different contents. The purpose of this article is not to delete precious memories but to free up disk space.
Can you remember all of this? A program that does everything for you would save you time and make things simpler. Avast Cleanup can help you. The Avast Cleanup tool lets you remove temporary files from the web browser and duplicate folders on Mac or Windows computers.
- Uninstall applications
The removal of unneeded or useless programs on your computer can increase hard disk space. The money they receive from those software companies can help PC manufacturers lower their prices by installing bloatware on their machines. This results in a bit of saving but lots of irritations—time to eliminate the headache.
To make your PC have more disk space, you may want to delete unnecessary applications:
- This is the first step. Choose Add or remove programs from the taskbar.
- Next, step 2. Remove programs from the list on your computer. You might need to search for unfamiliar programs to delete them. Something with Microsoft or Windows in it probably means that it is important and should not be altered. You can remove it from Disk Cleanup if it’s not important.
- Three. Please select the program you want to uninstall by clicking it.
This guide shows you how to uninstall Mac apps that eat up space and free up storage disk space without using a third-party uninstaller.
You can also uninstall apps using bloatware removal software for PCs and Macs.
- Configure System Restore
You can restore critical files lost by recent updates with System Restore. As long as you don’t need it, you can usually leave it as is.
Your hard drive reserves space for System Restore so it can function. The following steps describe how you can set aside space on your hard drive by using System Restore:
- This is the first step. You can choose System protection or Create a restore point from the Taskbar. Select Create a restore point.
- Using the highlighted window, click Configure.
- The slider controls the Max Usage amount. It is generally best to leave the default settings untouched unless all other options have failed to work.
The decision is up to you: is a failsafe mechanism more important than increased disk space? Exercise caution before making a decision.
What is disk space, exactly?
The total amount of hard drive storage space is called disk space. There is no unit for describing the volume of space on a computer. As a result, your operating system uses a lot of memory, called disk space, for apps like Google Chrome.
Why should I free up disk space?
It would help if you regularly cleaned up your PC to reclaim some space on a drive that is 90% full, as this will not perform as well as one that is 85% full. The most popular programs generate a surprising amount of garbage. This could explain why your hard drive is 90% full. It’s a good idea to become familiar with how to free up disk space.
You should keep at least 15% of your disk space free to store temporary files. The browser stores the information from commonly visited websites, so over time, you can accumulate data from sites you haven’t visited for months. Your browser’s temporary files can be deleted so that the sites you visit can take up less space.
Windows updates also consume space. Removing old updates and one-time installation files will make way for new updates to be installed, further securing your computer.
The hard drive will automatically split files into small segments, and it will store them wherever it can if you don’t have enough storage space. The segments will be read once the file is opened. The PC may have difficulties opening large files otherwise. This can be solved by defragmenting your hard drive, but you’ll need extra space.
Additionally, if your RAM must offload some work to your hard drive, you will need some free space. It will speed up considerably when this occurs, although it won’t freeze since the hard drive is too full to help.
How to check disk space on Windows 10
Windows 10 offers an easily accessible disk space. The link below is to show you the amount of disk space your Mac has.
The following steps will guide you through determining what is taking up space on your Windows 10 computer.
- The taskbar will display a folder icon.
- The PC can be selected by clicking here.
- You can determine the size of your C: drive by clicking on Devices and drives.
If your hard drive is full, you must clear it. It is also possible to do this via Windows task manager.
How to check disk space on Mac
To clean up your Mac hard drive, you must know how much space you’re using. This is easy to find out. Follow these steps to determine how much space your Mac has:
- The Apple icon is located on your desktop in the upper-left corner. The About This Mac option appears.
- The Storage tab will appear at the top.
You can also see here what storage type you are using. The categories should be obvious, although you should investigate what Other means on a Mac. It should be easy to speed up your Mac if you learn more about it.
Free up extra space with Avast Cleanup
What are the best ways to remove all the useless files and data without compromising important files or data? There is software available that can be used to accomplish this. It is hard to find anyone who isn’t using one of these apps due to how useful they have become to so many people over the years.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is my local disk C full?
There is an error message stating that when your C: drive is full, Windows will prompt you with this message: “Low Disk Space. There is no more space available on the Local Disk (C:). Click here to see whether you can free up some space.”.
Free Up Space On Mac
How do I delete unnecessary files from the C drive?
You can access the main drive (usually C: drive) by right-clicking it. It includes options to delete temporary files when you click on Disk Cleanup. There is also an option to clean up system files. You can then remove the categories by clicking OK > Delete Files.
How To Free Up Disk Space On Macbook Air
Does compressing C drive slow it down?
To decompress a compressed file, the CPU must work more. The reading of compressed files might be faster if the hard drive is slow on a computer with a fast CPU. These compromises write performance, however.
What happens when you run out of disk space?
Clear Up Space On Macbook
The answer to that question is simple: Your computer will work less efficiently. The reason for that is because when the memory on your computer runs out, it will turn to the hard drive space for “virtual memory.”