Is your Mac’s storage running out? Clean up a bit by deleting unnecessary files and moving certain files to the Cloud using the storage manager built into macOS.
Cleaning up a computer’s hard drive is never easy. Besides not really knowing where to start, having a clear idea of the elements that monopolize your storage the most is not easy.
You may not know it, but since Sierra, macOS comes with a very handy storage manager thanks to which you can free up storage space on your Mac.
In addition to recommending several manipulations, the tool makes it very easy to identify the elements that occupy the most space on your machine’s storage. Here’s how to use it to free up space on your Mac.
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1. Open Storage Manager
Open the Apple menu at the top left of the screen and click About This Mac.
In the window that appears, select the Storage tab, then click the Manage button.
Wait a few moments while your Mac can calculate the distribution of the occupation of your storage.
2. Store your documents in the Cloud
Start your little cleaning by first applying the Recommendations made by the tool. If you have an iCloud subscription, you can probably move the storage of some of your documents there to make room on your Mac. Click the Store in iCloud button.
By default, macOS suggests storing all Desktop and Documents items, as well as all Photos, in iCloud. If you have enough space on your iCloud subscription, keep these two options and click Store in iCloud to send the files there and delete them from your machine’s local storage.
3. Optimize storage
If you’re an Apple TV+ subscriber, you may have downloaded content to your Mac in hopes of watching it offline later. If you have not thought of deleting them after watching them, these films and series needlessly occupy the storage of your machine.
In the storage management tool, in the Optimize storage line, click Optimize, then in the window that appears, confirm your choice by clicking the Optimize button again.
Films and TV series downloaded to your machine and already viewed will be automatically deleted.
4. Empty Trash Automatically
When you manually delete files on your Mac, they go straight to the macOS Trash. Unfortunately for you, if you don’t remember to empty it from time to time, those “deleted” files aren’t really deleted and are still taking up space.
In the storage manager, on the line Empty the trash automatically, click on Activate then confirm by clicking again on Activate in the pop-up that opens.
All items sent to the trash will be automatically deleted after 30 days.
5. Review large files
If the recommendations suggested by the storage manager allow you to clear the way, you can probably go even further by reviewing the largest files stored on your machine and which you may no longer need.
To do this, in the Reduce clutter row, click Review files.
The storage manager then automatically selects the Documents directory in the left column, and immediately displays the list of large files found there, sorted from heaviest to lightest. Select the files you no longer need and click the Delete button at the bottom right of the window.
Then validate the deletion of these files by clicking on the Delete button in the pop-up that is displayed.
Retry the operation using the other sorting options (Download directory contents, Unsupported applications, Containers, File browsers), as well as navigating from the sidebar within the other file locations (Applications, Trash , Documents, Messages, Music, Photos, etc.).
After performing all these operations, you should have recovered several gigabytes of storage space, more than 20 GB on our work machine.