Is your Mac dangerously close to running out of storage? Usually, you can go on a short disk cleaning spree and free up a lot of space quickly. But sometimes, it’s just not that simple.
Open the Apple menu, then select About This Mac. Click the Storage tab in the toolbar to see how much disk space you have available. (On OS X Mountain Lion or Mavericks, click the More info. Download here: For Watching!Don't forget to like, comment and subscribe!-Connect with me!Twitter - michaelbillig.
A while back, we talked about the somewhat baffling “Other” storage that can end up consuming tens—if not hundreds—of gigabytes of disk space. This time, we shall focus on another perplexing issue: how to reduce a bloated “System” storage on the Mac.
What Is System Storage?
Whenever you go to Applemenu > About This Mac > Storage, the Mac’s internal storage indicator will display the amount of data related to the operating system as “System” storage.
Ideally, it should stay under 20 gigabytes, but you can expect it to keep growing slowly as you keep using your Mac. If it exceeds that by double or triple-digits, however, then here are the most common reasons why that happens:
- Local Time Machine snapshots.
- Large application log files.
- Bloated application or system cache.
- Broken Spotlight Search index.
If your Mac has a very large “System” storage allocation, the pointers that follow should you help reduce it. Don’t forget to clear the Trash and check the Storage screen frequently as you work your way through them.
Remove Local Time Machine Snapshots
If you have Time Machine enabled on your Mac, you may end up with a chunk of “System” storage well beyond the usual size limits. That happens when the operating system fails to clear older Time Machine snapshots from the internal storage. It’s best to check and get rid of them using Terminal.
Note: If possible, create a fresh Time Machine backup with your external backup drive connected before you go ahead.
1. Go to Finder > Applications > Utilities and open Terminal.
2. Type tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates and press Enter to bring up a list of all local Time Machine snapshots along with their relevant date tags.
3. You must delete the local Time Machine snapshots individually (starting with the oldest) and check if that reduces “System” within your Mac’s Storage screen.
Type tmutil deletelocalsnapshots followed by the date and name of the snapshot. Then, press Enter to delete it.
Repeat as needed, but avoid deleting the most recent snapshots. If you have your external backup drive around, however, you can safely delete all of them with the following command:
for snapshot in $(tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates | grep -v :); do sudo tmutil deletelocalsnapshots $snapshot; done
Delete Application Log Files
If you’ve used your Mac for some time, it may contain lots of application log files. In some cases, these files can end up consuming multiple gigabytes of storage. You can check and delete them by heading over to the Logs folder within the Mac’s user library.
1. Open Finder. Then, select Go > Go to Folder.
2. Type ~/Library/Logs/ and press Enter.
3. Check for any oversized log files and delete them. To make things easier, you can switch to List view (from the top of the Finder window) and use the Size column to sort the log files by size.
Delete Connection Log Files
Application logs aside, your Mac may also contain massive connection log files related to the Mail app. It’s best to check and get rid of them.
1. Open Finder. Then, select Go > Go to Folder.
2. Type the following folder path and press Enter:
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Logs/Mail
3. Delete any large connection log files inside the directory.
Delete System and Application Cache
Both the operating system and the various applications that run on your Mac frequently cache lots of files. That helps speed things up, but sometimes, the application and the system caches can balloon out of control and ramp up the “System” reading. Try clearing out any large file caches.
Tip: For a complete walkthrough, check how to clear the Mac cache.
1. Open Finder. Then, select Go > Go to Folder.
2. Type ~/Library/Caches/ and press Enter to open the application cache.
3. Switch to List view and sort the files and folders using the Size column. Then, delete any oversized items within the directory.
Note: If Finder doesn’t display folder sizes in List view, open View on the menu bar, select Show View Options, check the box next to Calculate all sizes, and select Use as Defaults.
4. Restart your Mac. If everything looks good, clear the Trash.
5. Repeat steps 1–4, but use the path /Library/Caches/ (which opens the system cache) in step 2 instead.
Enter/Exit Safe Mode
Booting into Safe Mode can help remove redundant or obsolete system-related files on your Mac. To do that, start by turning off your Mac. Power it back on, but immediately press and hold the Shift key until you see the Apple logo.
After your Mac boots into Safe Mode, go to Apple menu > About This Mac > Storage. Wait for a couple of minutes until the storage indicator updates itself completely. Then, restart your Mac normally and see if that helped.
Rebuild Spotlight Index
Sometimes, your Mac may display an incorrect “System” storage reading due to a broken Spotlight Search index. Try rebuilding it to help reduce system storage on Mac.
1. Open the Apple menu, choose System Preferences, and select Spotlight.
2. Switch to the Privacy tab. Then, drag and drop the system drive from your desktop inside it.
Note: If the system drive is not visible on the desktop, open Finder, and select Preferences on the Finder menu. Then, check the box next to Hard disks.
3. Select OK to confirm that you want Spotlight Search to stop searching the system drive.
4. Wait for a moment. Then, select the system drive that you just added and remove it using the Delete ( — ) button.
That should prompt Spotlight Search to re-index the system drive.
Too Complicated? Use Onyx
If the methods above to reduce system storage on your Mac seem too tedious, try using Onyx. It’s a completely free application that can quickly delete local Time Machine snapshots, remove outdated log files, clear the application and system caches, and rebuild the Spotlight index.
Onyx also works as a junk removal tool. If you keep running into storage-related issues on your Mac regularly, we highly recommend that you use it. Here’s a complete Onyx walkthrough.
How to Clean Your Mac's Hard Disk Drive?
SSD (Solid State Drives) is fast, stable, and offers great performance. Unfortunately, compared to HDDs (Hard Disk Drives), the capacity-to-cost ratio is not good. There are, however, methods to free up hard drives to obtain additional capacity for computer systems, including the macOS.
Certain data and files are important, and you will not want to delete or move them. However, some files are redundant and can be removed without consequences. If you know which files you can safely delete, you can free up this space. Although the Windows operating system is known for inefficient clutter, the macOS also produces unnecessary files that take valuable disk space. In this article, we describe some methods on how to clean macOS disk space.
Video showing How to Obtain Free Space on Your Mac's Drive
Table of Contents:
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Inspect the drive to ensure that the system is running out of free space
Some issues relating to lack of storage might be difficult to determine and can even be a result of fake error logs. So, first, ensure that the system is, in fact, running out of free space. There are two methods to check available space on a hard drive:
How To Free Space On Mac For Big Sur
1. Access the Apple menu and select About this Mac. Choose the Storage tab.
2. More detailed information can be found within the Disk Utility feature, which is located in the Applications folder under Utilities. Once Disk Utility is launched, select the drive connected to the Mac.
Begin by cleaning Trash
Once you are sure that the drive is actually full, the next step is to simply clean the computer (as if you were cleaning your home: you empty the trash). Open the Finder menu and choose Empty Trash. Bear in mind that some applications, such as Mail, iMovie, iPhoto, and others, have their own Trash. To clean those apps, follow the steps below:
1. Click Mailbox and choose Erase Deleted Items.
2. Select In All Account and Mailbox.
3. Finally click Erase Junk.
Alternatively, to avoid permanently losing your files, choose to archive your emails by following the steps below.
iPhoto
1. Click on iPhoto from the menu at the top of the screen.
2. Choose Empty iPhoto Trash.
iMovie
1. Click on File from the menu on top of your screen.
2. Select Move to Trash or File.
3. Then choose Move Rejected Clipsto Trash.
Clear unnecessary Downloads
The Downloads folder stores all files downloaded from the Internet. Often, these are forgotten after use and continue to use storage space. This is an excellent area to address when looking to free up space on your drive. Delete all redundant Download files.
1. Open Finder.
2. In the sidebar, choose the Downloads folder. Disk image (.dmg) files commonly occupy the most unused storage space.
Remove unused applications
Unused apps in isolation might not take up a great deal of space, but the amount of hard drive storage used by them collectively can be significant. Furthermore, removing apps on Macs is simple, especially those installed through App Store.
1. To delete them, open Launchpad.
2. Click and hold the program's icon you wish to remove.
3. When the icon starts to animate, click the Delete (x) button.
4. To delete any other app, drag the icon to Trash and then empty Trash.
Make space without losing any data
The best way to gain extra space on the Mac is to move non-executable files such as photos, movies, documents, and any large files, to add external storage, for example, an external drive, USB drive, DVD/CD drive, or cloud storage.
Compress large items
Another method to obtain some free space is to compress files. Compressed files remain on the computer but occupy less space. On the other hand, this can be less efficient than deleting or moving files to external storage. To find the largest files on the drive, follow the steps below:
1. Open Finder from the sidebar.
2. Select the Device (the label you provided) and type criteria into the search field.
3. When your search location appears (for example, This Mac), click the Add (+) button.
4. Click the first drop-down menu, and choose Other.
5. Find the logical size option, enable it, and then click OK.
6. Choose the 'is greater than' condition and type the amount (i.e., 50 Mb).
7. To compress items, right-click or hold Control and left-click it, and then select the Compress 'name' option.
If you are using an earlier version of macOS:
1. Click Go from the Finder menu and select Home.
2. Choose File, click Find and open the Find menu.
3. Find the File size option.
4. Choose the 'is greater than' condition and type the amount (i.e., 50 Mb).
5. To compress items, right-click or hold Control and left-click it, and then select the Compress 'name' option.
6. To archive, your emails, open the Mail application and select a folder you wish to archive (e.g., Inbox).
7. Drag it to the desktop. The mbox folder will appear on your desktop.
8. Right-click it or use the Control and left-click combination, and select Compress 'Inbox.mbox'.
9. Now you can delete your messages from Mail.
Delete unnecessary temporary files, system caches, and logs
System stores several System logs and temporary files - deleting them will increase the available space on your drive. To clean the system from this type of file, we recommendCombo Cleaneror other third-party applications.
Clear the browser cache storage
How To Free Mac Space
Browsers store website data such as cookies and cache information. Cleaning these hidden files might free up storage space. To clean up Safari, simply click Safari on the menu at the top of the screen and select Clear History. Browsers such as Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox can be cleaned similarly.