Running out of Space on Your Mac? How To Fix It In Minutes

When your Mac runs out of space, there are a few steps you can take to quickly free up more space on your Mac without spending any money. Whether you’re looking at “Your startup disk is almost full”. error or “Your disk is almost full.” error, we’ll show you how to free up space on your Mac.

This guide will show you how to free up space on your Mac and get more space to store photos, videos, downloads, files and documents. We’ll also explain how to find what’s taking up the most space on your Mac.

You may see one of these Mac storage error messages when you go to download a file or start working on videos or photos. We’ll show you how to free up space on your Mac with OS X El Capitan, macOS Sierra, and the upcoming macOS High Sierra.

How to Free Up Space on Your Mac

The first step is to find out what is using all the space on your Mac. If you’re using macOS Sierra or macOS High Sierra, there’s a built-in tool that can show you what’s using up space on your Mac and quickly clean it up. This won’t remove everything you can get rid of, but it’s a very good start and can easily free up a few GBs of space so you can get back to work or play.

In OS X El Capitan, you will need to download a program like the one below. Disk Diagnosticsis $2.99 ​​to download from the Mac App Store. Start with these tools and then we can dig deeper to find the files taking up space on your Mac.

1. In macOS Sierra and macOS High Sierra, click Apple in the upper-left corner, then click About This Mac.
2. Now click About This Mac.
3. Click Storage, then click Manage.
4. You can now use the built-in storage optimizer to reclaim space.

There are many options here. You don’t need to use them all, but they’re a great start to free up space on your Mac. Unlike searching and deleting files, this is a very safe way to remove files you no longer need.

store in iCloud

If you use iCloud and have enough storage space there, you can use Store in iCloud to store files and photos in iCloud until you need them. This will only keep newly opened and optimized photos on your Mac. This is an easy way to free up space, but if you’re traveling and often don’t have internet access, this may not be the best option.

Optimize Storage on Your Mac

This option automatically removes iTunes movies and TV shows you watch and removes email attachments so you don’t have junk files taking up space on your Mac. Click Optimize.

Choose how you want your Mac to handle attachments in Mail and what to do with iTunes downloads, then click Optimize.

Empty Trash Automatically on Mac

When you delete a file on your Mac, it stays on your computer until you empty the trash. This is so that you can restore a file that you accidentally deleted. To reclaim storage space, you must remember to empty the trash. With this option, you can set your Mac to automatically delete files that have been in the Trash for 30 days; this will keep your Mac storage free without you having to do anything. Click Open. To start using it.

Reduce Clutter on Your Mac

This is the easiest way to find and delete files using a lot of storage space on your Mac.

There are thousands of small files that you can download but no longer need. Mac can automatically find these files and then help you choose whether you should delete them or not. Click Inspect Files to get started.

This will show you a list of the largest files on your Mac and let you decide what to do with them. This is an area where you have to decide if you want to delete something rather than delete it. You will see important files as well as those you no longer need. In many cases, you may want to move them to a spare hard drive for safe keeping.

You can click on the categories on the left to make changes according to the file types. Plan to spend 15 to 30 minutes if you want to completely clean your hard drive, but if you need to delete the largest file or files to save space, you can finish it in less than five minutes.

Where Else to Look for Space on Your Mac

There are a few other places you can look on your Mac to save space. In most cases, the Reduce Clutter option above will find everything, but you can also look at these areas to free up space on your Mac.

Downloads Folder

The Downloads folder is where you save anything from the Internet by default. Open Finder and click Downloads. Now you can start navigating through the files and delete anything you no longer need. You can click the top size to sort by largest files, so you don’t have to look through every file to find the ones with the biggest impact.

Delete iTunes Movies and TV Shows

If you haven’t already deleted old shows and movies in the optimizing step, you should open iTunes and click on Movies & TV Shows to delete files you no longer need. An episode of a TV show can easily take up 1GB of space on your Mac, and movies can take up 4-6GB. If you own the movie from iTunes, you can download it from iCloud later. If you do not trust this option, you can move the movie to an external hard drive.

Delete iPhone Apps, Backups and Updates

Delete iPhone apps on your Mac to free up space.

When you download an iPhone app to your Mac, you don’t just tell it to install it on your iPhone. You’re also telling your Mac to save a copy. Open iTunes, click on Applications and then you will also see the Applications saved on your Mac. Click on the app or apps you want to delete and press the delete key on your Mac. Then click Delete App. Before we started downloading from our iPhone, we lost 4GB of iPhone apps for years stored on our Mac.

You can also delete old iPhone and iPad backups in iTunes that you no longer need.

1. Go to iTunes and click Preferences.
2. Click on Devices and you will see any backups.
3. You can now delete old backups by clicking one and then selecting Delete backup.

Make sure you don’t delete all your backups. Finding and deleting an old iPhone backup for a device you no longer use can free up a lot of space on your Mac.

Another place to look is the iTunes folder, where you can see many stored iPhone and iPad update files. You can delete these old update files without worrying about losing any data. These are just files that Apple offers to update your phone. In most cases, you can no longer use them, and if you can upgrade to iOS, you can download them again at any time.

1. Open Finder.
2. Hold down Option on your keyboard and click Go.
3. Click Library.
4. Scroll down and click on iTunes.
5. Check the iPhone Software Updates, iPad Software Updates, and iPod Software Updates folders.
6. If you see an update in this folder, you can click on it and delete it.

This is another easy way to free up a lot of space on your Mac in no time. You only need to do this if you update your iPhone or iPad without connecting to your Mac.

How To Find Out What’s Using All Your Mac Hard Drive Space

If you’ve used all the methods above and are still looking for a way to figure out what’s consuming all your hard drive space, download it. Great Perspective. This app is free online and $1.99 in the Mac App Store.

It will show you what is using all the space on your Mac and let you click on the blocks to see more information about that item. You can then view it in Finder and delete it if necessary. Note that this shows you everything, even files you shouldn’t delete, so make sure you do some homework before you click on deleting some of the big files you find here.