If your Mac is running low on storage, you may think you have too many apps installed or your music collection is out of control, but that might not be the case. Instead, there may be lots of hidden files taking up valuable space on your Mac. Getting rid of apps isn’t that easy, but there are ways to free up this space, often referred to as “Other”.
You can see how much space the “Other” category occupies on your Mac by clicking the Apple icon in the menu bar in the upper left corner of the screen, and then clicking . From there, click on More Info and then select the “Storage” option.
“Other” is indicated in yellow and takes up several gigabytes of space for most users, if not most of the time. For me, it’s a whopping 38GB. In any case, though, it would be nice to know what those files are.
Usually, the “Other” category isn’t a huge deal if you have a large hard drive, but considering that newer MacBooks come with flash storage as low as 128GB, some users just need all the free space they can get, and the “Other” category is simply It is something that cannot get out of control.
Fortunately, we know what types of files are stored in the “Other” category. Here’s how to identify these files and delete them from your Mac to free up space.
Basically, any file that doesn’t fit into the other categories falls under the “Other” category. Basically, apps on your Mac consist of data other than photos, music, videos, or backups. However, operating system settings and data usually fall into this category, as do Safari cache, email, text messages and iMessages, calendar data, contacts, as well as cache data for all other apps on your device, add-ons, and extensions. Match.
A few gigabytes of files in the “Other” category are likely normal, but if you’re like me and you have 38GB of storage in this category, there are probably some files I can get rid of to make room.
How to Free Up “Other” Storage
Let’s start with the easy ones first. Empty your trash, uninstall apps you no longer use, and delete old conversations in iMessage. In fact, unless you absolutely need to record an iMessage conversation, I suggest you delete all conversations in iMessage and start fresh. For me, just deleting a few old conversations cleared up almost 10GB of storage.
This is because you’ve probably sent or received a few photos and videos here and there, and they all add up over time. So by deleting iMessage conversations, you can free up a ton of storage space very easily.
Once you’re done with the easy stuff, now it’s time to move on to the hard-to-find files that you can delete to free up space. a tool like Disk Inventory X It can scan your Mac and find out where all the space-occupying files are.
Sometimes, you’ll discover that the biggest culprits are system files that you can’t delete, but most likely Disk Inventory X will point you to files you forgot even had on your Mac, like a few HD movies. For example, I have already watched. You can delete the files you don’t want from the application or you can go to that folder manually and delete the files from there.
Disk Inventory X isn’t the whole package, so CCleaner Another great app to have on hand for deleting files taking up more space. CCleaner has an easy-to-understand user interface that lets you get rid of hidden temporary files that are no longer used by applications on your Mac.
With CCleaner, all you have to do is mark the items you want deleted and then click to see how much space deleting those files will save you. If you’re happy with it, click it and let the app do its thing.
Finally, you can’t delete important system files, but there are some system files that you can delete without compromising your Mac’s file system. OS X comes with language files for hundreds of different languages, but if you’re like many users, you probably only speak one language, maybe two if you took classes in high school and college. However, there are language files for many languages that you will never use on your Mac, and these files take up extra space.
CCleaner can delete unused language files, but we actually monolingual to do more extensive work. All you have to do is select the languages you don’t use and the app will delete them from your Mac. Doing this alone saved me a massive 2.2GB of storage.
When Everything Else Fails…
If clearing all those old files doesn’t help that much (and that seems to be the case for most OS X users), you can try restoring from a fresh backup. Sometimes the “Other” category is much larger than the data it holds due to data corruption. If it shows that a ton of storage is occupied by the “other”, that’s what usually happens.
However, if restoring from a new backup still doesn’t work, the best way to free up space is to start fresh and restore your Mac to factory settings. It’s not ideal, but it can save your apps, music, photos, videos, etc. it’s always a good idea to check it out so your Mac stays organized and you don’t have random files piling up and taking up space.