In this age of technology, where the major portion of our data is stored digitally, it is very annoying that MacBooks still come with tiny hard drives that fill up very quickly. But don't worry there are a few quick and easy ways to free up space on your hard drive. This is how you can clean up your Mac and reclaim some drive space.
Yes, you might say that finding and deleting the big files can ease your job, but if we look at it realistically, we can agree that there are many complications in these with the essential files and everything else. Keeping them aside you can only delete some files and that will only get you so far. You can reclaim most of the free space on your Mac if you dig a lot deeper - Removing the duplicate files, emptying the trash cans, Uninstalling unused applications, etc.
Unless kept clean, you are eventually going to get the same old, " Your disk is almost full" error, so just take initiative and start now, before it becomes mandatory.
Clean Up Your Mac The Easy Way
There could be a situation where you do not really want to spend much time finding and cleaning things up manually, in that case, you can use CleanMyMac3 to get rid of the temporary files, uninstall applications, clean up extra language files, get rid of the bigger attachments in Mail, and a lot more.
It has as its features, almost all of the cleaning processes that we will talk about in this article but in a single app, except you cannot use it to find duplicate files, but luckily you have another app for it, it is called the Gemini 2
You should go into the details of the apps before using and you need to make sure that all your data is backed up before using these apps, just in case something goes wrong.
Find and Remove Duplicate Files
The duplicate files that are littered up in your computer take up lots of drive space and can be one of the trickiest things, especially if you have been using the computer for a long time. Fortunately, we have apps like Gemini 2 that can find and remove duplicate files and have a rather slick and easy interface.
You can either get it from the Apple App Store or you could get it from their official website where you will also get the free trial.
There are many other apps on the App Store that will serve the same purpose, but Gemini 2 has been tested out thoroughly and has worked well.
Empty Your Trash Cans
When we talk about Trash on a Mac, it can be compared to the Recycle Bin on Windows. Thus, what happens is that when you delete a file from your Mac, it gets stored in the Trash so that it can be retrieved if required in the future. To remove these files permanently and free up the space they have consumed you will need to empty out your Trash. But there is a slight exception in Mac where there can be multiple Trash cans and you will need to empty out all of them.
You can empty your account's main trash can by right-clicking the Trash icon which will be at the bottom of the dock and then select Empty Trash. This will clear out your trash.
Uninstall Applications You Don’t Use
You know that the applications that you are running on your Mac, all take up a lot of space, so if there are applications that you do not use much or are thinking to get rid of, now is the time.
Just open a Finder window, then select Applications in the sidebar, and then drag-and-drop the application's icon to the trash can on your dock.
You can just open a Finder window, then select Applications, then click on the "Show items in a list" icon on the toolbar and then click the Size heading so that all your applications will be sorted on the basis of size, thus allowing you to know the size of all your applications and finding the ones taking up a larger space.
Check Your Disk For Large Files
It is helpful to know what exactly is using up disk space on your Mac when you're trying to free up disk space. There are hard disk analysis tools like Disk Inventory X that go through the whole of your Mac's hard disk, scanning it, and display the folders and files that are using up the most space. Then you can delete these folders to free up space.
If these are files and folders that you care about, you can just move them to external media, for instance, there could be large video files hogging up the space and you can store them on a hard drive rather than your Mac.
You need to keep in mind that you do not want to delete any important system files.
Clean Up Big Attachments in Mac Mail
If you have been using the same mail account for a long time, you might be having large mail attachments that are taking up a lot of your space (this can be up to GBs). So it is a good start to check and clean your drive.
You can save space by changing the Mail settings to not download attachments automatically, or you could use a cleanup tool to get rid of them.
Just go to Mail, then Preferences, then Accounts, then Account Information, and then change the drop-down for "Download attachments" to either "Recent" or "None".
After this, the mail would not use up as much space going forward but the previously downloaded attachments still remain.
To delete them, you will have to follow this process which might seem a little annoying:
- Go to Mail and click on the folder from where you want to remove attachments.
- Find the biggest messages by using the Sort by Size option.
- First, click on the message and then choose the message, then Remove Attachments from the menu bar. You have to be using IMAP to delete the attachment like this.
- Then just repeat these steps for all the messages that you want to delete.
These are a few of the easiest ways you could clean your drive space. Even if you are using a new Mac, you would want to keep these precautions so that the situation doesn't get too tough to handle later on.
