- Apps That Take Up A Lot Of Storage On Mac Computer
- Apps That Take Up A Lot Of Storage On Mac Pro
- Apps That Take Up A Lot Of Storage On Mac Pro
- Apps That Take Up A Lot Of Storage On Mac Download
Feb 03, 2020 So, your Mac is running out of storage. You try to figure out what’s taking up your disk space by clicking the Apple logo on the top-left of the screen, selecting About This Mac, and hitting the Storage tab. To your surprise, you see a yellow bar representing “System” that seems to occupy way more space than you think it should.
The amount of data you can store on your hard drive is a precious resource and one of the important features you check on the list when buying your new Mac. But what to do when your Mac storage is almost full? You can go to “About This Mac” to see how your memory is distributed in your machine. In this article we will tell you about how to manage storage on Mac.
Nov 15, 2019 To see how much storage these other files take up on your Mac, go to Apple Menu About this Mac and tap the Storage tab Wait for the information to populate The “Other” category is a combination of files that are not recognized as one of the other file types (Music, Apps, etc.). These files are of temporary nature and their purpose is time limited, but they usually don’t get deleted from the system right away. These files keep piling up and eventually take up a lot of space on your Mac. Cleaning up these types of files is a good storage to manage Macbook storage. Feb 01, 2018 When prompted for password then type in your password. This will then start making a local time machine backup in the system. This will take a while. If you want a quick backup then type 'tmutil snapshot'. Check your Storage to see that the backup has been made with minimal amount of purgeable space since the snapshot was made.
You Need to Know About The Types of Storage on Your Mac First
The drive storage on your Mac can be categorized into three types depending on where the files are placed and what applications use them. In order to understand how you can manage MacBook storage optimally, you need to understand what these storages are and what files are included in it. The three categories are discussed below:
1. System Storage
Macbook System storage includes all the files on your Mac which are required by the operating system to load and run properly. Your macOS is also stored in your System storage along with startup applications and system update files. The files on this storage include important files for your system to function properly to the system logs and junk files your MacOS keeps for system troubleshooting or maintenance.
2. Other Storage
Even when you didn’t read about System storage before this, you probably had an idea that these files are on your Mac for something related to the ‘System’. But the really confusing part is where you see Other storage. The storage bar almost lists everything I can ever put on my Mac; like photos, movies, audios, apps, system, so I have always wondered what is Others and how can I clear all the space which is occupied by Others. Upgrade mac os yosemite. We can simply say that all the other files you have on your mac which cannot be listed in the above titles, they go to others. The others may include any documents, zipped archives, temporary files, etc.
3. Purgeable Storage
Purgeable storage is part of macOS storage management to intelligently handle the storage on your machine. MacOS makes use of iCloud storage in most efficient manner and limits the actual amount of data on your disk. Your Mac storage optimization feature identifies these files as safe to delete from the system. This is either because the files haven’t been used in a very long time, or copy of these files have been placed in the Cloud storage and they can be deleted from the Mac storage.
How Do You Check Storage on your Mac
You can easily check the status of your Mac storage in your Mac OS X system information depending on the macOS version you are using.
macOS 10.7 or Later
To check the storage details in MacOS 10.7 or later. Mac software to mute speakers iphone. Go to About This Mac in Apple Menu and click More Info. Here you can see different tabs, click Storage. You should be able to see this window.
macOS 10.6 or Earlier
- For macOS 10.6 or earlier versions, you can see your disk space using Finder. Open a new Finder window and select your disk drive in the sidebar.
- Now go to File and click Get Info, you should see the following window.
Now, that you know what your storage space looks like, you are probably thinking how to manage my storage on Mac?
The answer is pretty simple as there are three options available with you to manage Macbook storage space by using your operating system applications, third-party applications, and manual hacks. We will discuss all of them in detail.
Use All-in-one Tool to Manage Storage on Your Mac (Free Up 40% Disk Space)
Apps That Take Up A Lot Of Storage On Mac Computer
However, your Mac OS applications will give you minimum control over the space you can free up by letting you clean your Trash or some of the unneeded files. The better way to do that is to use a third-party application like Umate Mac Cleaner.
Umate Mac Cleaner is designed to clean up more than 40 types of junk files piling up in your Mac storage. It will automatically scan your Mac storage to detect any unnecessary junk file which can be deleted safely from your system. You can select from 2 cleaning modes; Quick Clean or Deep Clean. With a single click, Umate Mac Cleaner will remove all the unwanted files to make storage space on your MacBook with the features - Clean Up Junk. Another feature of the application is Manage Apps and Extensions, it can uninstall unused applications and remove unnecessary extensions on the Mac to make more space available. The advantages and steps of using Umate Mac Cleaner are shown below. You will love it like most of Mac users!
Step 1. Install and launch Umate Mac Cleaner.
Step 2. Click the Scan button on the Clean up Junk part. Select unwanted files and click Clean to free up more storage space.
If you want to manage your storage on Mac and free up more space, you can also perform the feature - Manage Apps & Extensions.
Step 1. Choose 'Manage Apps & Extensions' tab and click the 'View Items' respectively on 'Uninstall Apps' and 'Remove Extensions' for loading all the apps and extensions on your Mac.
Step 2. After scanning, just choose those unneeded apps and extensions and delete them in a flash.
Or You Can Manage Storage on Mac Manually with These 9 Ways, Maybe Time-Consuming
We are listing down some manual ways you can use to manage your Mac storage. However, they are time-consuming and not so effective on managing storage, so we don’t recommend that. Anyway, you can still take a look at them and follow the steps.
Way 1: Default Mac Storage Management Tools in macOS Sierra
MacOS 10.12 Sierra has built-in features for Mac storage management to free up space in your MacBook. You can go to Apple Menu -> About This Mac -> Manage to see the list of options you can choose from.
- Store in iCloud
- Optimize Storage
- Empty Trash Automatically
- Reduce Clutter
Way 2: Delete System Files And Temporary Files
The operating system continuously creates system logs and cache files which are essential for the system operation and necessary for troubleshooting of any problem your mac faces. These files are of temporary nature and their purpose is time limited, but they usually don’t get deleted from the system right away. These files keep piling up and eventually take up a lot of space on your Mac. Cleaning up these types of files is a good storage to manage Macbook storage.
To delete these files, you can go to the system folder location ‘~/Users/User/Library/Application Support/’. Here you can manually delete the temporary files of the application which are using a lot of space. However, manually deleting these files still run a risk of any important file being deleted. Try using Umate Mac Cleaner for this purpose.
Way 3: Clean Downloads Folder
The Downloads folder is where everything on your mac is stored and this is the largest folder on anyone’s computer (Size-wise). Naturally, this is your default location and you hardly ever feel like moving files from here. After a certain time, you end up with a lot of files (which you probably don’t even remember what you downloaded for) taking up more than 50 percent of your storage space. The best way is to go through this folder periodically and delete any file which is no longer required.
Way 4: Delete Time Machine Local Backups
MacOS 10.13 High Sierra comes loaded with Time Machine. A system application that creates local snapshots in case you need to restore data without the backup disk. You can delete older snapshots to free up space on your mac. Open Terminal.app from Utilities and then type the following commands
- su root
- sudo su
- tmutils listlocalsnapshots
- tmutils deletelocalsnapshots (filename)
Way 5: Remove Plugins and Extensions from Apps on Your Mac
Application plugins and web browser extensions are installed automatically in the application packages or as a part of webpage. However, you must clean these to avoid any unnecessary trouble with the system. And you also get the space of your storage cleaned up in the process. To remove extensions;
- Goto browser preferences (Safari, Chrome, Firefox).
- Find the tab labeled Extension.
- Remove unnecessary extensions from the browser.
Way 6: Remove Storage-eating or Unused Apps
Any file on your system which has not been used for a longer period of time is just eating up the storage space on your Mac. There is one quick hack to sort out what files are taking up the largest space and delete any unnecessary items. Check the Applications installed (Arrange the applications according to Size to give you a better idea about space management). Also, you can search Download folder for any unwanted and old file taking up a lot of space. This is definitely an efficient way to manage storage on your Mac and free up more space!
Way 7: Delete Mail Attachments
The email attachments are downloaded on your Mac for viewing offline. These attachments start stacking up on your disk storage. Therefore it is a good practice to periodically delete large attachments with your mail. Search you Mail and in View, select Sort by and list the received mail according to Attachment. Select and delete unwanted mail attachments.
Way 8: Find and Delete Large Files
To manually search and delete large files, you can use the basic features of the Spotlight in your Mac.
- Open a new Finder window, press Command + F.
- In the search field, click on Kind > Other, and choose File Size.
- Select the ‘is greater than’ filter and enter the file size (e.g.; 100 MB)
Way 9. Add External Storage
The mechanical spinning hard drives are getting cheaper every day, and this makes the option of carrying an external disk drive a very affordable solution. You can find a 1 TB Hard drive supported by USB 3.0 in between the range of $50 - $80, easily. By moving your large files and the files which you do not need all the time to your external storage, your storage management becomes a lot comfortable.
Apps That Take Up A Lot Of Storage On Mac Pro
Final Thought
The manual space management can take up a lot of your time in digging through millions of bytes of data. Using the powerful Umate Mac Cleaner to manage storage on Macbook will do this for you in just a few clicks and your Mac becomes as good as new. So easy!
Optimized Storage in macOS Sierra and later* can save 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.
Click the Manage button to open the Storage Management window, pictured below. This button is available only in macOS Sierra or later.
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, then choose from these options.
- Automatically remove watched movies and TV shows. When storage space is needed, movies or TV shows that you purchased from the iTunes Store and already watched are removed from your Mac. Click the download icon next to a movie or TV show to download it again.
- Download only recent attachments. Mail automatically downloads only the attachments that you recently received. You can manually download any attachments at any time by opening the email or attachment, or saving the attachment to your Mac.
- Don't automatically download attachments. Mail downloads an attachment only when you open the email or attachment, or save 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 to 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, 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. Then click Options next to iCloud Drive: Store in iCloud turns on the Desktop & Documents Folders setting. To turn off iCloud Drive entirely, deselect iCloud Drive.
In 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, 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 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 of Sierra or later, 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.
Apps That Take Up A Lot Of Storage On Mac Pro
Learn more
Apps That Take Up A Lot Of Storage On Mac Download
- 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.