How To Free Up Space On A Mac Hard Drive

1. How To Free Up Space On A Mac Hard Drive Recovery Software
2. How To Free Up Space On A Mac Hard Drive Western Digital

Does mac come with word. If you purchase an external drive for your Mac, you might be doing so to free up space on your boot drive, or to provide a central and unrestricted area for all user accounts to access.

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Is your old laptop or computer running a bit slowly? It could be that the hard drive is too small and all your hard disk space is all used up. Here are a few different ways to recover some extra Hard Drive space.

You should never fill your hard drive to more than approx 80% capacity or it will slow down performance?

There are lots of files you can probably get rid of, but how do you find them?
1. Use Disk Inventory to see where your space is being taken.
You probably have lots of old files lying round you don't use much, some of them might be very big.

This program shows you what is taking the most space.

But Disk Inventory X is very good for beginners and it does a nice graph like the one you see here of what is using your disk space.
1. Download Disk Inventory X from here.
2. Run it, go have a cup of coffee – it can take a while.
3. Look at the results, they will be a picture like this:

You can mouse over the colors to see which files they are on the hard drive, and then manually delete the folders to create free space.

I found lots of thinks I did not need with this program, like old movies that I no longer needed and had forgotten about, folders full of microsoft junk, etc.

Don't delete anything if you don't know what it is.

A more advanced piece of software with some extra options (but also extra complexity) is described here.

2. Remove all the extra language files to gain a few hundred MB.
OS X comes with almost 50 languages. Chances are you only speak one or two. Multilingual will allow you to delete some of the language files that you do not need.
1. Download Monolingual from here
2. Run it and it will remove all the language files you don't need. It defaults to keeping English. (It gets rid of Afrikaans, Albanian, Amharic etc.

This will be more useful on an older smaller hard drive where the space taken by the language files is a significant proportion of the drive. But if you have a big drive (say 100G or more) you probably won't even notice an extra few hundred Megabytes taken by the language files.

3. Clear out your Library/Application Support folder
Have a look in your Macintosh HD/Library/Application Support folder. There may be some folders from applications you have deleted but no longer use. You can delete them.

4. Clear out your Printers
This is like the languages, but for printer drivers. OSX comes ready to work with hundreds of printers, chances are you only have one or two. Have a look in Macintosh HD/Library/Printers and delete any folders for printers you don't need. For example the Epson library contains 1.4Gig of files and I don't even have an Epson printer!

5. Manually delete files
This is the hard way to make more space! But there is a trick to speed it up.

To see how much space a folder takes, go to Menu ‘View/Show View options' then select the box that says ‘calculate all sizes'.

Then sort these folders by folder size by clicking on the size heading in the window.

You can now see which folders take the most space.

When you are finished deleting files empty the trash.

This deletes them totally from your hard drive and frees up space. While they are in the trash they still take up space. Be careful, there's no way to get them back after you have deleted the trash!

Movies take up the most space, if you delete them they will free up lots of space.

Move iOS backups to an external drive.

Here's a great article on how to move your iPhone and iPad backups:

https://www.imore.com/how-move-your-iphone-or-ipad-backups-external-hard-drive

Optimized Storage helps you save storage space space by storing your content in iCloud and making it available on demand:

• When storage space is needed, files, photos, movies, email attachments, and other files that you seldom use are stored in iCloud automatically.
• Each file stays right where you last saved it, and downloads when you open it.
• Files that you've used recently remain on your Mac, along with optimized versions of your photos.

If you haven't yet upgraded to macOS Sierra or later, learn about other ways to free up storage space.

Find out how much storage is available on your Mac

Choose Apple menu  > About This Mac, then click Storage. Each segment of the bar is an estimate of the storage space used by a category of files. Move your pointer over each segment for more detail.

How To Free Up Space On A Mac Hard Drive Recovery Software

Click the Manage button to open the Storage Management window, pictured below.

Manage storage on your Mac

The Storage Management window offers recommendations for optimizing your storage. If some recommendations are already turned on, you will see fewer recommendations.

Store in iCloud

Click the Store in iCloud button, then choose from these options:

• Desktop and Documents. Store all files from these two locations in iCloud Drive. When storage space is needed, only the files you recently opened are kept on your Mac, so that you can easily work offline. Files stored only in iCloud show a download icon , which you can double-click to download the original file. Learn more about this feature.
  
• Photos. Store all original, full-resolution photos and videos in iCloud Photos. When storage space is needed, only space-saving (optimized) versions of photos are kept on your Mac. To download the original photo or video, just open it.
  
• Messages. Store all messages and attachments in iCloud. When storage space is needed, only the messages and attachments you recently opened are kept on your Mac. Learn more about Messages in iCloud.

Storing files in iCloud uses the storage space in your iCloud storage plan. If you reach or exceed your iCloud storage limit, you can either buy more iCloud storage or make more iCloud storage available. iCloud storage starts at 50GB for $0.99 (USD) a month, and you can purchase additional storage directly from your Apple device. Learn more about prices in your region.

Optimize Storage

Click the Optimize button to save space by automatically removing watched movies and TV shows. When storage space is needed, movies or TV shows that you purchased from Apple and already watched are removed from your Mac. Click the download icon next to a movie or TV show to download it again.

Your Mac will also save space by keeping only recent email attachments on this Mac when storage space is needed. You can manually download any attachments at any time by opening the email or attachment, or saving the attachment to your Mac.

Optimizing storage for movies, TV shows, and email attachments doesn't require iCloud storage space.

Empty Trash Automatically

Empty Trash Automatically permanently deletes files that have been in the Trash for more than 30 days.

Reduce Clutter

Reduce Clutter helps you identify large files and files you might no longer need. Click the Review Files button, then choose any of the file categories in the sidebar, such as Applications, Documents, Music Creation, or Trash.

You can delete the files in some categories directly from this window. Other categories show the total storage space used by the files in each app. You can then open the app and decide whether to delete files from within it.

Learn how to redownload apps, music, movies, TV shows, and books.

Where to find the settings for each feature

The button for each recommendation in the Storage Management window affects one or more settings in other apps. You can also control those settings directly within each app.

• If you're using macOS Catalina or later, choose Apple menu  > System Preferences, click Apple ID, then select iCloud in the sidebar: Store in iCloud turns on the Optimize Mac Storage setting on the right. To turn off iCloud Drive entirely, deselect iCloud Drive.
• If you're using macOS Mojave or earlier, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click iCloud, then click Options next to iCloud Drive. Store in iCloud turns on the Desktop & Documents Folders and Optimize Mac Storage settings.
• In Photos, choose Photos > Preferences, then click iCloud. Store in iCloud selects iCloud Photos and Optimize Mac Storage.
• In Messages, choose Messages > Preferences, then click iMessage. Store in iCloud selects Enable Messages in iCloud.

• If you're using macOS Catalina or later, open the Apple TV app, choose TV > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Files. Optimize Storage selects 'Automatically delete watched movies and TV shows.'
• In you're using macOS Mojave or earlier, open iTunes, choose iTunes > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Advanced. Optimize Storage selects 'Automatically delete watched movies and TV shows.'
• In Mail, choose Mail > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Accounts. In the Account Information section on the right, Optimize Storage sets the Download Attachments menu to either Recent or None.

Empty Trash Automatically: From the Finder, choose Finder > Preferences, then click Advanced. Empty Trash Automatically selects 'Remove items from the Trash after 30 days.'

Other ways that macOS helps automatically save space

With macOS Sierra or later, your Mac automatically takes these additional steps to save storage space:

• Detects duplicate downloads in Safari, keeping only the most recent version of the download
• Reminds you to delete used app installers
• Removes old fonts, languages, and dictionaries that aren't being used
• Clears caches, logs, and other unnecessary data when storage space is needed

How to free up storage space manually

Even without using the Optimized Storage features described in this article, you can take other steps to make more storage space available:

• Music, movies, and other media can use a lot of storage space. Learn how to delete music, movies, and TV shows from your device.
• Delete other files that you no longer need by moving them to the Trash, then emptying the Trash. The Downloads folder is good place to look for files that you might no longer need.
• Move files to an external storage device.
• Compress files.
• Delete unneeded email: In the Mail app, choose Mailbox > Erase Junk Mail. If you no longer need the email in your Trash mailbox, choose Mailbox > Erase Deleted Items.

Learn more

How To Free Up Space On A Mac Hard Drive Western Digital

• The Storage pane of About This Mac is the best way to determine the amount of storage space available on your Mac. Disk Utility and other apps might show storage categories such as Not Mounted, VM, Recovery, Other Volumes, Free, or Purgeable. Don't rely on these categories to understand how to free up storage space or how much storage space is available for your data.
• When you duplicate a file on an APFS-formatted volume, that file doesn't use additional storage space on the volume. Deleting a duplicate file frees up only the space required by any data you might have added to the duplicate. If you no longer need any copies of the file, you can recover all of the storage space by deleting both the duplicate and the original file.
• If you're using a pro app and Optimize Mac Storage, learn how to make sure that your projects are always on your Mac and able to access their files.