You can free up space on your Mac by manually deleting files and emptying your trash. You can also zip files or store them on iCloud to clear space on a Mac. Decluttering apps can help to quickly. Free Up Disk Space For Mac Catalina; How to free up disk space on Mac using compression? Open Finder and go to your Documents. Command + click on a folder (or multiple folders). Choose Compress. Be aware that macOS leaves the original file untouched, so once you have the archive, the original folder can be deleted. The quickest way to free up.

A full startup disk is something that every Mac user will experience. This problem used to be known as “Startup disk full” notification. However, on newer macOS versions this message has been changed to “Your disk is almost full.”

But luckily, it’s a problem that has many solutions. And in this article, we’ll go over:

• What is startup disk full?
• What's causing 'Your disk is almost full' alert?
• How to fix startup disk full?
• How to prevent 'Your disk is almost full' problem?

However, we also understand that some people are short on time and just want to fix startup disk full. So, if you’re not really interested in what it is and why it happens, just skip the next two sections and head to “How to Clean Your Startup Disk”.

Or, even better, if you’re looking how to clear space on Mac, we’d highly recommend a utility called CleanMyMac X. It'll help you clean up gigabytes of disk space in just minutes (you can download it here).

Note: if you’re running a newer version of macOS, it has a built-in option of Optimized Storage that is supposed to solve the problem of the full hard drive by moving files into the cloud.

By clicking 'Manage' you can open the menu and see what Optimized storage offers. However, it moves junk and useless files to the cloud together with your files, and eventually, you end up paying for iCloud storage to store junk. So we still recommend getting CleanMyMac and actually dealing with extra files rather than simply moving them.

Now, with all that said, let’s get into what exactly “Your disk is almost full” means.

Understanding What “Your Disk is Almost Full” Means

What is a startup disk?

A startup disk, as taken from Apple Support article, is a volume or partition of a drive that contains a usable operating system. Still confused? Let’s break it down for you.

Your Mac hard drive consists of disks (or partitions). Each disk (or partition) has your Mac data on it, which consists of your operating system, applications, etc. Most Mac users have just one disk but power users may have two or more.

Let’s look at an example of a Mac with only one hard disk:

• Your Mac's hard drive is 500GB.
• It has one 'disk' on it, so all 500GB of storage is on that disk.
• The disk has an operating system (macOS Big Sur), and user data (apps, etc).
• And since you only have one disk, this is your startup disk: all 500GB.

A Mac with two disks will have the storage divided between them. The Mac drive with the OS on it is the startup disk while the other drive is just used for storage of files. It’s possible to have multiple startup disks, but most Macs will only have one. And for proper disk cleanup on Mac, all drives are just as important.

Why your disk is almost full?

This is easy. It’s a lot like why is your fridge full? There is no more space! Your disk is almost full and this is very bad news for any drive. A hard disk should never get beyond 85% capacity (especially a startup disk) as you will experience slowness and errors the further you get above that mark.

If your startup disk is full and you get a message of warning from your Mac, this is a serious indication that you need to clear up storage immediately.

What to do when your disk is almost full?

So how do you fix your almost full startup disk? The same way you solve the problem of a packed fridge - you need to clear up storage, of course. To make more space on your startup disk you will need to:

1. Delete files from your Mac.
2. Move files to an external hard drive or cloud storage.
3. Or install a second internal hard drive on your Mac.

So, now that we know what a startup disk is, we need to talk about how to fix it. Let’s take a closer look at your disk space to see exactly what is causing your disk to be almost full.

What’s Causing 'Your Disk Is Almost Full' Alert?

Short version: Take a look under-the-hood of your Mac.

Before we can see what is taking up space on your startup disk, first we have to find it:

1. Hover on the Dock at the bottom of your screen and open Finder.
2. Click on “Finder” in the menu bar at the top of your screen.
3. Then select “Preferences…”
4. In the window that opens, checkmark the “Hard disks” checkbox.

After selecting this box, your desktop should now show the hard disks on your Mac, in the form of icon(s), like this:

These are disks on your Mac that you can “startup”, this is because they have operating systems on them. If there is more than one of these hard disk icons that show up on your desktop, it means you’ve got multiple hard disks on your Mac. If you only have one, skip the down to “What is taking up all of my startup disk space?” section.

If you have more than one, continue with the next step:

Click on the Apple icon at the top left of your screen System Preferences > Startup Disk.
Here, again, you’ll find your hard disk(s); they’re probably named something like MainSSD or MainHD. It will also display “OS” and the version number of that OS. If you have more than one OS drive, your startup disk should be the one with the latest version of macOS running on it, but we’re going to make sure of that in the next step.

I only have one and it looks like this:

To make 100% sure that you know what drive is your startup disk, follow these steps:

1. Click on the Apple Icon in the menu at the top-left of your screen.
2. Select “About This Mac.”
3. Under macOS, you’ll find a version number. Mine is 11.01.1, like so:

See how my version number in the “About This Mac” window matches the number in my Startup Disk section? Yep — That’s my startup disk. Found yours? Good.

What is taking up all of my startup disk space?

Now that we’ve identified our startup disk, let’s take a closer look at how to clear up space on Mac:

1. Click the Apple Icon in the menu at the top-left corner of your screen.
2. Choose “About This Mac.”
3. Click Storage.
   Note: If you are running an older version of OS X you may have to first click “More Info…” and then “Storage”.

Take a look at my hard drive disk:

I’ve got 500GB of storage, and about 275GB of it is free.

So, how big is your hard disk? How much free space do you have (if any — *gulp*)? And what’s taking up the most space? It is important to consider drive capacity and data storage needs for future storage plans — we’re not just here to fix the problem, for now, we’re going to make sure you never have this problem in the future as well.

Now that we have the knowledge, it’s time to take action and fix your Mac’s “Startup Disk Full” problem.

Let’s go over 11 things you can do to help fix 'your disk is almost full.' These should also give you other ideas as to how else to fix it — You know your Mac better than we do!

1. Clear system storage on Mac

System storage cleanup sounds like a serious undertaking. But, technically, it boils down to just one thing: having the courage to scrap the old files.

1. Search for large ZIP/RAR archives in Downloads.
2. Open your Desktop (Command + F3) and delete screenshots.
3. In Applications, sort your apps by size. Delete the largest ones.
4. Restart your Mac to free up RAM.
5. Get rid of system junk files with a free version of CleanMyMac X.

This app gives you lots of possibilities to free up space, especially when it comes to system junk. CleanMyMac X has been notarized by Apple, which basically means it's safe to use. And if you got 5 minutes, try this tool as it shows you where exactly your junk hides.

2. Clean up cache files on your Mac

Cache files are files that help your Mac run programs a bit more smoothly. Think of them like blueprints for a house: your Mac has the blueprints for how a program is supposed to load/run/look, so it loads it faster; without them, it’d be like building it from scratch. However, over time, these caches can start to take up some serious space. Periodically, removing them can help clear storage. And don’t worry, your Mac will create fresh, new ones after you restart your Mac. To remove caches:

1. Open a Finder window and select Go in the menu bar.
2. Click on “Go to Folder…”
3. Type in ~/Library/Caches
   Delete the files/folders that are taking up the most space.
4. Now click on “Go to Folder…”
5. Type in /Library/Caches (simply lose the ~ symbol)
   And, again, delete the folders that take up the most space.

Deleting cache files is generally safe for your Mac. And once you delete them, the applications and processes you run on your Mac will generate fresh, new ones. But, when deleting, worry more about removing them based on size rather than just removing all of them.

Also, you can check the /System/Library/Caches folder as well, but it might be better not to touch this folder without knowing what the items are. A utility that correctly cleans up these files (and pretty much everything else on this list) is, you guessed it, CleanMyMac X. It cleans up even your system caches with just a few clicks.

Oh, and once you’re done with this list, restart your Mac so it can create these new cache files.

Read more: How to Clear Cache on a Mac?

3. Get rid of localization files

Localization files are also known as “language packs.” Lots of apps come with other languages that you probably don’t need. To clear up space on your Mac, delete the ones you don’t need:

1. Open a Finder window.
2. Go to Applications.
3. Ctrl+click on an application.
4. Select “Show Package Contents.”

From here, go to Contents > Resources and look for files ending in .lproj. These are the languages your app has just in case you want to use it in another language, like Spanish (es.lproj). Drag the ones you’ll never use to the Trash.

Again, a safer alternative to this would be to use CleanMyMac X. It gets rid of all of them with a click. No digging through application folders, just a cleaner Mac.

Read more: How to Delete Language Files from macOS?

4. Delete duplicate files

Even if you have the most organized Mac on a planet, duplicates happen one way or another. It can be a file you’ve mistakenly downloaded twice or a mail attachment you’ve opened several times. Regardless of how they appeared, those files sit on your Mac and gobble up storage.

But finding and deleting them is a time-consuming process if you do it one by one. So here’s what you can do for a simple Mac disk cleanup:

1. Open the Finder app on your Mac
2. Move cursor over File and click New Smart Folder
3. Click the “+” button in the upper right corner and choose the type of files you want to see
4. Now sort them by name to quickly spot duplicates.

Remember to pay attention to the date of creation to make sure you keep the true original, not the copy.

While this is the best way to remove duplicates manually, it takes lots of your time and dedication. It’d be much easier to leave this to Gemini 2: The Duplicate Finder.

This app quickly scans your Mac for duplicate and similar files and allows you to delete them within minutes. It keeps your originals safe and helps you easily retrieve files deleted by accident.

5. Remove old iOS backups

Backups can tend to take up a lot of space. You can find and remove them by:

1. Launching a Finder window.
2. Clicking “Go” in the menu bar.
3. Selecting “Go to Folder…”
4. Then, type in ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/

Get rid of all the old, outdated backups your Mac has been storing for a bit more extra space.

6. Remove large and old files

Keeping many large files on your Desktop and in Documents slows down the system. And if you delete only a couple of these enormously large files, you can get half of your storage back.

Let’s open the familiar About this Mac pane once again. If you click Manage, you’ll see this window for sorting files.

While this instrument is good for finding large files, it misses a lot of things. See that “Other” category that takes up 38.GB?

To deepen your search for massive files, use this tool from CleanMyMac X. It’s called Large & Old files finder.

It’s much more helpful as it shows you lots of other categories of files, like Archives. The app breaks your files by Size and Last Used.
To see this instrument in action, download the free edition of CleanMyMac X. And click the Large & Old files at the bottom of the sidebar.

7. Remove unnecessary applications

This isn’t often overlooked, but definitely under-appreciated. Removing old, unused applications is a great way to get some extra space on your startup disk. Go through your applications folder and get rid of all the apps you rarely use. But make sure you remove them correctly, don’t just drag them to the Trash. If you do, you’ll leave behind tons of leftover parts and pieces, and we’re trying to get back startup disk space — It’ll kinda defeat the purpose, no?

This is another place we’d suggest using CleanMyMac X. To completely remove any application, just launch CleanMyMac X, click Uninstaller, select your application, and then click Uninstall. You won’t have to search all over for development junk that’s left behind when Trash’ing an application. It’s incredibly easy and saves you tons of time.

8. Move your Photos and Docs to the cloud

When your local storage is full to the brim, your Mac will start uploading this data to iCloud. But only if you have this setting enabled. Is your Photos app synced with iCloud already? Let’s check.

• Open Applications and find the Photos icon.
• Launch Photos and click on Preferences in the top menu.

Ticking the box iCloud Photos will connect your Photos library to iCloud. And what’s more important, if you select Optimise Storage, some part of your Photo library will be moved to iCloud. This way you macOS saves precious space. The free iCloud plan allows you to free up at least 5 GB worth of storage.

The similar logic applies to your Documents and other files. To set up the cloud backup with iCloud drive, go to System Preferences > Apple ID > iCloud.

9. Clean up your Downloads, Movies, and Music folders

Have a closer look at these three folders. You’d be surprised at how many downloads can accumulate when you aren’t paying attention. Clean out anything you don’t need (or don’t know) and organize the rest. It’ll take a load off your mind to know that there’s nothing excess there.

The Movies folder can be a pain, not because you’re searching through tons of files, but it can be difficult to choose what to delete. Personally, I never want to get rid of Top Gun. It’s amazing. I watched it 3 times in a row last weekend. But alas, sometimes you need to make sacrifices for the health of your Mac. Though, what you can do with movies you want to keep is to archive them. So, archive what you wish to keep and remove the rest.

How to archive/compress a file

Archiving a file doesn’t mean to store deeper into the abyss of your Mac — but to turn the file into something smaller, into a compressed file (like .zip or .tar). By archiving a file, you shave off some memory. Archiving is essential for things you want to keep on your Mac, but don’t often use, and helps you clear up some space. And that’s what this is all about right? We’re essentially doing the hokey-pokey on your Mac. To archive a file, just:

1. Ctrl+click the file you want to compress (recommended for movie files).
2. Select, “Compress .”

The last place to sweep through is the Music folder. Find and remove duplicate music files first, and then clean up all the songs you downloaded on a weird Sunday afternoon cleaning the house.

10. Clean your Desktop

“Clean my desktop… but why?” Because some people’s desktops are hard to look at, that’s why. Organize your desktop and get rid of the stuff you just don’t need on there. It looks better and helps your Mac act a bit faster (I don’t know the rocket science behind this one, but it feels too good to be false). Your Mac doesn’t waste time loading all those icons and junk, just… Just clean it, please.

11. Empty out the Trash (No, we’re not joking…)

Seriously: It may sound incredibly basic, but it could clear a surprising amount of storage. I forget to do it all the time. The thing is, that when you delete something, your Mac doesn’t remove it — it just moves it to the Trash. Plus, you’ve probably deleted way more than you realize, and all that could be sitting in the Trash, wasting space. So get rid of all that junk by emptying the Trash:

1. Ctrl+click your Trash in the Dock.
2. Select “Empty Trash.”
3. And click “Empty Trash.”

And, the easiest step is done.

A few more tips to clear storage on Mac

1. Manage your Optimized Storage

This option comes with your operating system starting macOS Sierra. Go to the Apple menu > About this Mac > Storage

Now, click on Manage to reveal the space-saving options:

2. Erase your Junk Mail

Open your Mail app, and click Mailbox in the upper menu. Here you can erase spam and already deleted items.

Full Startup Disk Prevention

We’ve cleaned up a few things on your Mac, and hopefully, it’s given you more ideas as to what else you can clean. But, let’s take a look at how much space you saved from cleaning the list above. Remember how we checked your Mac’s free space? Open that window again and see how much space you’ve cleared up:

1. Click the Apple Icon in the menu at the top-left corner of your screen.
2. Choose “About This Mac.”
3. Click Storage.
   Note - If you are running an older version of macOS you may have to first click “More Info…” and then “Storage”.

You’ve probably got a bit more space, and you’ll want to keep it that way. The only way to prevent a “your disk is almost full” is by keeping your Mac clean. We’d recommend a complete cleaning every 2–3 weeks.

Say goodbye to the 'Your startup disk is almost full” message.

We've told you how to delete storage on Mac in multiple ways. Hopefully, this has helped you fix that full startup disk problem. Your startup disk should now be quite a bit lighter (we hope). Oh, and if you liked this article, get social with it to help others in need. And if you really liked this article, subscribe to our email list — we’ve got more guides on the way. And we’ve also got a utility that’ll help you out a ton in the long run: CleanMyMac X. It helps you clean your entire Mac with just the click of a button. It’s incredibly easy to use and works like a charm.

You can find a lot of articles on various tips for cleaning storage space on the Mac. Unsurprisingly, most of them written by companies that build and sell disk cleaning software. The truth is you can clean the disk space from junk manually, without any special software.

So, how you can clean your Mac startup disk without any specialized software?

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:

1. Empty Trash

This is the lowest hanging fruit to start the cleaning disk space process. When one deletes any file the latter does not disappear right away.

Instead, it goes to Trash, so if you accidentally deleted something or deleted and then changed your mind, it is possible to restore the files.

This flexibility, however, comes with a price.

When deleted files go to the Trash they still using the disk space and prevent adding new data.

If you didn’t clear Trash for a long time you may be surprised by how much more free disk space you can get by cleaning it.

Just find the Trash icon in the Dock and then right-click on the icon and click on Empty Trash.

2. Clean Downloads Folder

Another low hanging fruit. It is also the safest thing one can do to clear the disk space, other techniques can be quite disruptive.

The good thing about macOS is that it has a special Downloads folder, so you don’t have to go over each browser’s settings to find out where they store downloaded files.

Download folder gets populated every time when you:

• Open a document in Safari, Chrome, or other browsers
• Download a new app in the form of dmg or pkg files

Over time the Downloads folder gets pretty big, especially when downloading big applications such as Microsoft Office or Photoshop.

For instance, the size of Microsoft Office download (DMG file) is around 4GB.

Once the application had been installed there is no even a single reason to keep the DMG file on the disk – you can always download it again when needed.

One thing you should do before cleaning the Downloads folder is to eject all DMG disks.

How to open downloads folder on a Mac

Use the Finder app

The easiest way to open the Downloads folder is by using Finder app. The Downloads folder usually appears on the Sidebar (left panel of the Finder).

If the folder does not appear you can always enable it in the Finder menu: Go to Finder Preferences, click on the Sidebar tab and then select the Downloads option under the Favorites section.

Or you can just go directly to the folder. Use Shift+Command+G key combination and in the Go to the folder pop up window type “~/Downloads” and hit Enter.

Use Chrome

Free Up Disk Space Mac Air

After downloading anything Chrome displays a download status in the status bar (bottom).

If you click on the arrow next to the downloaded item it and then click “Show in Finder”, then Chrome will open the Downloads folder inside the Finder app.

If you closed the status bar after downloading a file don’t worry. You can always see the downloads history by using Shift+Command+J key combination (or type chrome://downloads/ in the URL bar).

From this window, you can either click again on “Show in Finder” or click on the icon with three dots and choose Open Downloads Folder.

Use Safari

Use Option+Command+L key combination inside Safari.

Use Firefox

Use Command+J key combination to bring up Downloads history.

Now go ahead, review all the files in the Downloads folder, save the ones you need and delete the rest.

3. Use Manage Storage To Find Out The Junk Files

One of the easiest ways to estimate what’s taking up disk space on your Mac is to use Storage option (available in macOS Sierra or later).

Just click on the Apple logo in the top left corner of the screen and then click on About This Mac (first option).

Now, click on Storage tab and it will display an aggregated view of types of files you have.

For example, on my MacBook, the disk is shared by:

• System files: 39.36GB
• Apps: 23.65GB
• iTunes: 7.89GB
• Documents: 6.36GB
• iOS files: 4.34GB
• Other volumes: 3.9GB

To get a more detailed view click on the Manage button and let the system to update info.

The first option in the view is Recommendations.

For instance, macOS recommended me to:

1. Store files in the iCloud
2. Optimize Storage
3. Empty Trash automatically
4. Reduce Clutter

Let’s review each recommendation.

Store files in the iCloud

This is a great option with a caveat. By default, everyone gets 5GB of free space when opening an Apple Store account (pretty much anyone who has a Mac).

However, 5GB is an extremely low storage option, so Apple is upselling their iCloud and they want you to subscribe for more space.

The cheapest plan is 50GB for $0.99 per month, less than $12 a year. However, most people would need at least 200GB which costs $2.99 per month.

If you are Ok with the additional cost then this is a great option. macOS will automatically back up files to the iCloud and only keep the latest files on the disk.

Obviously, you will still be able to pull the files you need later to your local disk.

Optimize Storage

If you frequently download and watch movies on iTunes then this is a nice option.

While you can always delete the movies you already watched enabling this will allow you to not worry about maintaining movies and TV shows.

To enable click on Optimize button and then confirm your decisions.
I enabled this option just in case.

Empty Trash Automatically

We already know about the benefits of periodic Trash cleanup, so the recommendation seems to make sense to implement.

However, I am not very comfortable suggesting this to you.

The last thing I want is to learn that the file I deleted 30 days ago and suddenly need now, was automatically removed.

I heard about users that used Trash as temporary storage. They would delete the file for some period of time and then restore it when needed.

If this sounds like someone like you then this recommendation will not be useful.

Reduce Clutter

This will allow you to manually go thru the files and identify those that may be deleted.

Click on Review Files and it will change the view Documents. Here you have 3 options: Large Files, Downloads, and File Browser.

We already covered Downloads.

Large Files gives you an option to get big gains by deleting the biggest files you have on the disk. It’s simple math, deleting 10 1GB files will free 10GB space when deleting 100 1KB files will only free 0.0001GB.

The last tab, File Browser, allows seeing documents created by all applications on the Mac.

The process of sifting through the File Browser is tedious and requires a lot of time, but in my opinion, this is the most valuable view.

Since the largest files are listed at the top I was able to quickly identify two issues:

I had 7.89GB of Music hidden on my drive.

This happened when I downloaded some MP3s from the Internet and uploaded them to my iPhone. I then deleted the MP3s from the disk, but they still were somewhere on the disk. They are not available on iTunes either, the only place I see them is here.

So I opened the folder in the Finder, drill down to iTunes Media and then Music folder, found the files that I thought were deleted and then moved them all to Trash.

Immediately I was able to free 7.8GB of hidden space.

Another app that does not remove files cleanly is iMovie.

After working on a movie clip that contained a lot of different smaller clips I deleted the project and thought all files were gone as well.

Only in File Browser, I was able to see that the clip and its copy are still taking space.

The interesting thing is that I couldn’t see it in the iMovie app. Deleting those files freed another gigabyte.

There are other sections in Storage Manage view and I strongly encourage to go thru all of them because everyone has a different computer setup. I just want to add some notes about two of them.

iOS Files

If you have an iPhone the backups will appear here. If you have multiple backups (as I do) I suggest deleting old ones to save space. All you need is the last one really.

Mail

While I don’t use the Mail app on this MacBook, on the Macs where I do, I periodically delete messages with attachments. While messages themselves are usually, the attachments can take a lot of space.

4. Find and delete duplicate files

Conventional wisdom tells us that file copies take additional space and it makes sense to find and delete duplicate files if you want to free some space.

In fact, some 3rd party cleaning tools specifically sell removing duplicate files feature as one of their selling points.

But macOS is not Windows.

If you have been upgrading the operating system on the Mac (and have macOS High Sierra or later) then your drive must be in APFS (Apple File System) format.

One of the features of APFS is that duplicates do not take additional space on the disk.

I decided to test this claim myself with following steps.

I downloaded Windows 10 iso to my Downloads folder.

The available free space on my startup disk immediately decreased by 4.8GB (the size of the iso file).

Then I copied the file into 5 different folders on the same disk. The space used and space available stayed the same.

Then I started deleting the files. I deleted 4 copies without affecting the free space. Then I deleted the original file.

Available space on the drive did not change.

Only when I deleted the last copy of the file I was able to claim back the free space.

By the way, I was deleting files from Trash as well.

Then I decided to see if I can trick macOS by renaming the file.

I downloaded the same gigantic file again. Then did copy and paste it in the folder.

Space did not change.

I made multiple copies with different names, but the effect was the same as in the first test.

This means macOS is smart enough to know that the file copy is not just the name, but also the contents of the file.

Bottom line: You don’t need to worry about duplicate files because they do not take additional space on disks formatted as APFS.

On the other hand, if you deleted the file and space did not change it means there is still a copy of the file somewhere because space does not get freed until the last copy of the file gets deleted.

How to know if your disk is in APFS format?

If you have an SSD disk and macOS High Sierra or later then the startup disk would be in APFS format.

If the Mac is on macOS Mojave or later then the disk in APFS.

If you still in doubt there is a simple way to find the disk format.

• Start Disk Utility from Spotlight Search
• Click on Macintosh HD
• In the details page, you will see the format of the disk

5. Move Files To An External Storage

Most of the time we don’t need to store all files on the Mac startup disk. Most files, e.g. pictures from the last vacation, school graduation videos, etc, can be stored on external storage.

As we established earlier, one of the great ways to store files externally and save space on the disk is to use iCloud. The disadvantage of this approach is the cost.

Most people are reluctant to pay a monthly fee because small monthly fees tend to add up to considerable amounts over the span of multiple years.

If you are one of those people who buy a cable modem instead of renting it from the cable company (as I do) because with one-time purchase you recoupe the investment and end up with your own device then consider buying an external drive.

There are two main types of external storage currently: external SSD drives and flash drives.

You may need both as they have different purposes.

I spent numerous hours researching the best drives and if you need advice check the drives I personally recommend:

By the way, many users report that Storage screen displays that Documents files take much more space than they see in the Documents folder.

One of the things that get reported as Documents is Time Machine backups.

If you have Time Machine enabled and the snapshots stored locally eventually the entire disk may be claimed by Time Machine.

While Time Machine deletes old backups to free up some space it still tends to take as much space as available.

The solution is to either back up to an external drive or partition the startup disk and point TM to the new partition to limit the size of the snapshots.

Read more here: What Does Time Machine Backup

6. Use Compression To Shrink Files And Folders

Compress utilities

Since people started using personal computers we were always in need of extra storage.

One way to save on storage is by compressing the files. When files are compressed they take less disk space.

The downside is that files are usually are not readily available for usage, so this approach is best for archiving rarely used files.

There is an easy way to compress files and folders in macOS.

For instance, I had the Documents folder on my MacBook which I wanted to compress. The size of the folder is 257.2MB.

I opened the folder in the Finder app, right-clicked on it and selected “Compress “Documents”” option in the pop-up menu.

The Finder created one file which contained the entire folder and the size of this file was 211.9MB.

So, if I delete the original folder and keep the compressed file I would be able to save 18% of disk space.

While savings are not huge, you should know that Compressing utility in macOS is very rudimentary. There are other applications that can get better results.

I didn’t investigate which archivers are the best, I picked just a random free app and created a .7z archive with BetterZip app.

The latter produced a file with 184.6MB size which saved 29% of the original space.

I am sure there other apps that can compress better and I promised to write a comparison article later.

Create a compressed disk image

Did you know that you can create DMG files yourself? DMG stands for Disk iMaGe and you can create one yourself.

1. Start Disk Utility from Spotlight Search.
2. In the Disk Utility menu click on File, then New Image, and then Image from Folder. Or use the Shift+Command+N key combination.
3. In the folder, search dialog find the folder from which you want to create an image and click on Choose button.
4. Enter the name of the disk image file and in the Image Format select the compressed option.
5. Click Save

The folder I used as an example was packed in an image of 223.3MB size, which is even worse than the compressed folder.

7. Clear Cache Files

If you were researching ways to remove unwanted files from the Mac, you definitely saw advice on clearing the cache. The topic is controversial in my opinion and I will explain why.

What are caches on Mac?

Caches on Mac designed to improve the performance of the applications.

For instance, Safari will cache images from the web page so when the user visits the page the second time Safari can upload the image from the cache and avoid using internet bandwidth to download it from the server.

Since the local disk is faster than the network the page will load up faster.

More Safari and other applications save in cache, faster they perform. The downside is the cache files should be stored on the local disk and take the precious space needed for other applications.

Most applications, especially those written by Apple developers, try to purge the stale cache. For instance, if you visited the web page yesterday then the cached page will load faster today and tomorrow.

But if you didn’t visit the web page for a year then it does not make sense to keep its cache. Safari and other browsers will delete old cache periodically to free space for more fresh and relevant data.

But as applications are written by individual developers, not all developers are created equal.

Some app developers may care very little about the additional work required to keep cache under control. So these applications may eventually have their cache bloated and need some way of trimming it down.

What happens if I delete all cache files on Mac?

When all cache files get deleted on Mac the applications which used cache for performance improvement will slowly build it up again.

When Safari needs to download a web page, it first checks its cache in case the file can be uploaded from the local storage.

Since cache was purged, Safari will download the web page from the Internet first time, save it in the cache again, so the next time it can read the page from the local drive.

Remember the time when you first opened your Mac?

It did not have any cache in the beginning because applications do not come with cache preinstalled. The cache gets built over a long time.

Was Mac slow at the beginning?

I don’t think so.

Did you notice it got faster over time because the applications had a chance to save some data on the local drive?

I doubt. To me, it feels the same.

The difference is noticeable when you have slow internet, e.g. dial-up.

In the US internet speeds over 50MB/s are very common, so saving the browser cache is not as important as it used to be 10 years ago.

Is it safe to delete cache files on Mac?

In 99.9% of cases deleting cache files should be safe.

Applications supposed to use cache files as a way to improve their performance. If the cache files are deleted the application will add it back to the cache if needed.

This is how it supposed to work. Would I bet my life on it? Of course, not. There are as many cache implementations as there are developers.

Can some developers write the application to depend on the existence of some files? Sure.

Can application stop working after some of its files get deleted?

Absolutely.

During my development career, I saw so much bad code so nothing can surprise me.

There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things.

Phil Karlton

Anyway, while I don’t see value in deleting the cache let me show you how to do it as safe as possible in case if you want to go this route.

How to know which cache files to delete?

Most applications use the same /Library/Caches folder to keep their cache files. Purging this folder should be enough to release significant space on the Mac. Alternatively, all browsers have the ability to clear cache from their menus.

Before deleting anything on the computer I strongly suggest backing it up.

So, if you end up deleting wrong files or some applications start misbehaving you can always go back in time when everything was green and happy.

Clearing cache in browsers

Clearing Chrome cache on Mac

• In the Chrome use Shift+Command+Delete key combination to bring up Clear Browsing Data dialog
• Switch to Advanced tab
• Uncheck all checkboxes except Cached images and files
• In Time Range select All Time
• Click on Clear Data button

We only deleting images because they take the most space and we don’t want to lose browsing history and stored passwords.

Clearing Safari cache on Mac

In the Safari browser use Shift+Command+E key combination or find Empty Caches option in Safari’s Develop menu.

Clearing Firefox cache on Mac

• Click on Clear Recent History under Firefox’s History menu
• Alternatively, use fn+Shift+Command+Delete key combination on MacBook
• Uncheck all boxes except Cache
• Set Time range to clear to Everything
• Hit Clear Now button

Deleting /Library/Caches folder

There are two /Library/Caches folders: one that starts with Tilda (~) and one that doesn’t. The former is a user cache and the latter is a system cache. If I were you I would never touch anything in System.

The steps to clear User cache are the following:

• Start the Finder app
• Under the Go menu click on Go to folder item
• In the little dialog type ~/Library/Caches (make sure it starts with Tilda)
• Do not delete top-level folders under Caches. Instead, drill down to each folder and delete everything under them.

Cleaning CloudKit cache on Mac

Some users ask if it is safe to delete CloudKit folder in Caches. The CloudKit folder is needed for macOS to know which files to upload to the iCloud. They keep the history so syncing happens faster. If the CloudKit folder is too big, the best way to approach is to change caching parameters in System Preferences.

What is CloudKit on Mac?

Free Up Disk Space Macbook

CloudKit is a service (program) that runs on Mac and manages data transfer from the computer to iCloud. Every time a new picture is added on the Mac, the CloudKit makes sure that it gets backed up in the Apple iCloud server.

Well, all this is good, but why is iCloud taking space on your Mac? What is CloudKit cache and why do you need it?

Similar to browsers, the CloudKit uses a cache to reduce the network bandwidth (data usage). Instead of deleting the iCloud cache, it’s better either to reduce the cache size or turn off caching completely.

Let me show how to do it.

Reducing iCloud cache

Steps to clear iCloud cache are following:

1. Click on Apple Logo in the Apple menu
2. Click on System Preferences
3. Locate and click on Sharing icon
4. Click on Content Caching
5. Click on the Options button
6. In the pop-up window decrease the cache size
7. Restart Mac for changes to take effect

Turning off iCloud cache

If you don’t want to use iCloud caching, then turning it off in System Parameters is a better alternative to deleting CloudKit cache from the Finder.

Steps to turn of iCloud cache are following:

1. Click on Apple Logo in the Apple menu
2. Click on System Preferences
3. Locate and click on Sharing icon
4. Uncheck Content Caching option
5. Restart Mac for changes to take effect

8. Flush DNS cache

The last thing the experts suggest to do is flushing the DNS cache.

The reason to flush DNS is generally to fix problems with connection to specific web sites. Flushing DNS does not clear significant space on the disk, so I will not do it here.

Free Up Disk Space Macbook Pro

I used to do it often when I was setting up servers and playing with their domain names. However, for most Mac users I believe this step is unnecessary.

9. Upgrade your disk

While it is impossible to replace the disk in new MacBooks certain laptop models can be upgraded.

I found a good SSD solution for some old models: Feather M13 SSD. With Feather SSD you can upgrade local storage up to 1TB if your MacBook is:

• MacBook Air 2010 – 2017
• MacBook Pro Retina 2012 – 2015
• MacPro Late 2013
• Mac Mini Late 2014

Check the compatibility chart to see if your MacBook can be upgraded.

Conclusion

We reviewed some ways to remove unwanted and junk files from the MacBook to free space.

By implementing the suggestions above I found an additional 8.3GB space on my 128GB disk (almost 7% more space).

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Image credit: Flickr