Clearing space is important for two reasons that are also very important to each other. Firstly, if your Mac is packed-up with data, it won’t run as fast as it could and its performance will slow down. Also, you won’t be able to save larger files and it might even lead to data loss.
If you do a lot of work on your Mac, here is one of the first steps you should take – delete your mail storage attachments. The attachments might be kept on your Mac or downloads each time from your Mac. It slows down your performance and lowers the free space available.
Here we’ll share some useful tips for clearing up some space on your Mac – to keep it running smoothly.
Empty Your Trash
For some of you who regularly clear up your Mac’s Trash bin, it might seem obvious, but to some of you – not so much. The truth is that Mac doesn’t automatically delete the files from Trash, so you need to do it yourself. And if you haven’t in a while, there might be a few gigabytes stacked up in there. Simply right-click it and choose the option to Empty Trash.
Delete The Apps You Don’t Use
We all have apps that we never even use or stopped using. Both on our iPhone and Mac. The problem is, that these apps take up precious space on your Mac and at the end – slow down your technological miracle that is considered to be one of the most efficient computers. It’s understandable that you might be a fan of technology and could want to try out new apps and that’s okay – just delete them afterward if you don’t use them anymore.
If you have macOS Sierra or any newer version of macOS then you have a built-in storage management feature. To use it, click on the Apple icon that is located in the upper left corner. Click on About This Mac option, then go to the Storage section. Next, click on Manage. Here, you can activate a feature that deletes everything from Trash every 30 days. Another thing to do is to go to the Applications tab and here you’ll see a list of all apps you have on your Mac. Select the apps you want to erase and click Delete.
Delete Unneeded Files
The same as with the apps – if you don’t use it, then delete it. Go to Storage Management again, but this time choose the Documents option. Here you’ll see that the application has sorted out all the files from largest to smallest. Surely give the biggest attention to the large files – it’s enough to delete just a few to clear a big amount of space on your Mac. To delete a file, click the Delete option.
Use Cloud Storage
This is the solution for such a situation when you really need extra space on your Mac and there are some files like pictures or videos, which you don’t use daily but it would be a shame to delete them. The perfect solution is cloud storage like Google Drive, pCloud, OneDrive or Dropbox. Some of these drives give you some space to keep your files for free but you can also choose a premium plan to increase that storage. More to it, you’ll be able to access your file from anywhere where you have an internet connection.
Get A Hard Drive
Another solution for all kinds of sentimental photographs and videos is an external hard drive. Nowadays they are not too expensive, easy to attach, detach and can also be used as USB drives to transfer information from one device to another. It’s to you to decide if this investment is worth it or not – if you don’t trust the cloud apps and plan to keep some extra confidential files, then maybe you should go for a hard-drive.
Optimize Your Photos App
In the Photos app, you will find an Optimize Storage option. If you already use it on the iPhone, you know pretty well how it works. If not, we will explain shortly – it does not store the entire iCloud library on the phone or computer and only keeps the recent photos and videos, plus the low-resolution thumbnails of other visual data you have. If needed, then the divide will simply download the wanted photo from the iCloud.
So when you click on the Photos app on your Mac, go to iCloud, press on iCloud Photos and choose the Optimize Storage to enable this feature. If you tend to take a lot of pictures, this feature will save you loads of free space on your computer.
Keep Your Documents On iCloud
Especially if you use Mac for your work, you probably have a lot of documents on it. If you don’t use those documents constantly and daily, you can also store them on your iCloud and simply download them whenever you need them. This way you’ll create like an online archive for all your documents and it won’t stack-up your computer.
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