'Your startup disk is almost full. To make more space available on your startup disk, delete some files.' Inevitably, a full startup disk warning as such comes up on your MacBook Pro/Air, iMac, Mac Mini at some point. It indicates that you are running out of storage of the startup disk, which should be taken seriously, because a (almost) full startup disk will slow down your Mac and in extreme. 'Your startup disk is almost full' I ignored this message for a long time until I saw this new popup message: 'Your start up disk is full' I knew that something had to be done. I realized that I needed to clean up my computer and free up disk space. In this article, I explain what I did to increase available disk space on my Mac.
Open the Apple menu and go to 'About This Mac' Choose the 'Storage' tab (older versions of OS X need to click on ‘More Info' before the Storage tab appears) Review the storage usage to see what is eating up space and where you can focus your initial efforts on reclaiming some storage capacity.
Today, in 2020, MacBooks are more spacious than ever. The new MacBook Air 2020 is confirmed to be shipped with a 256-GB hard drive. But no amount of storage seems to be enough as the ever-inflating digital media is taking over our hard drives. Cloud servers are only a partial answer to that. They aren't getting cheaper and consume insane amounts of the world's electricity. So if you want to take a load off your drive and help the planet, you should teach yourself a couple of storage-keeping tricks. Let's go.
That's the bad news. Office 365 business mac download. Now for the good. There are several simple ways to fix the low disk space problem, including one we're especially fond of: wiping out junk files with a cleaner app. We recommend CleanMyMac X — it removes system junk and empties multiple trashes to free up disk space on your Mac. You can download it now and get cleaning right away, or take a look at some DIY ways first.
What's causing low disk space on your Mac?
How To Make Space On Your Mac Startup Disk Drive
Before you begin to free up disk space, let's identify what's taking it up. From the Apple Menu in the upper left-hand corner of your screen, select About this Mac and then click the storage tab in the window that opens. You'll get a handy, color-coded graph that looks like this:
In the above example, you can see that apps, audio files and 'other' (for details on what this 'other' category consists of, look here) have commandeered most of the disk's available space. https://usliofanes1986.mystrikingly.com/blog/boxy-for-inbox-by-gmail-2-0-3.
It's nice to see what's stored on your Mac, and even nicer to be able to browse the folders that contain the files themselves. Now that you've identified what's on your drive, let's look up at freeing up some space.
How to increase disk space on your Mac
There are several options here, so let's go through a few.
1. Move large, old files off your Mac
Often times the files that end up taking the most space are tucked away in 'cold storage' on your computer. Video proc 3 5 20200120 2. These are big movies, photos or the like that you rarely look at, but can't part with, either. In this case, archiving the files and moving them to an external drive is a good way to free up storage space on your Mac.
Locating huge neglected files can be a pain, but it gets super easy with CleanMyMac app. It has a dedicated Large & Old File finder. With it you can find some massive documents and sort them by type, last used, and more criteria.
You can download the free version of CleanMyMac X here.
As the name suggests, it finds files that occupy a lot of space on your disk, but haven't been opened for a long time. You can quickly review these files right in the app and decide which ones you want to archive. I touch id for mac. Login snapchat on mac. to see how it works, it's a really handy feature if you have a lot of heavy stuff piled up.
2. Uninstall unused applications
If you're like me, you often try an app '.just to see what it does'. While that's fun, it frequently results in a slew of forgotten apps. It's a good practice to set a reminder to review your Applications folder and clean out the ones you no longer use. Just note, however, that simply dragging an app into your Mac's trash doesn't eliminate all of its related files.
CleanMyMac's App Uninstaller, on the other hand, leaves no leftover pieces behind, which means more available space on your Mac. When told to delete an app, CleanMyMac X finds every related document and file, no matter where it has been tucked away, and marks it for deletion.
And speaking of setting up a reminder, CleanMyMac's scheduler will handle that task for you, too. Just tell it how often you'd like to be prompted to give your Mac a good cleaning and leave the rest to the app.
3. Take out your Trash
Review your Trash bin's contents one last time before you empty it. Click on your Trash and click the Empty button that is found to the right of the pane.
Tip: Use Command + Option + Delete to delete any folder immediately bypassing Trash.
4. Clean up the Downloads folder
Files love to hide in your Mac's Downloads folder. Old disk images, random photos, unused extensions, ZIP files… they're in there, not making a sound. Hiding. ?lick the Downloads stack in the OS X Dock and browse what's sitting in there, wasting space on your disk. Anything that's unnecessary can be dragged to the Trash.
5. Delete duplicate folders and files
How many times do we copy or download things twice? Like many users, I would prefer to have a backup twin of my important files. But that often ends up in my files being quadrupled…or what do they call a 4th or 5th copy of the same folder?
To effectively remove duplicate files and make space on Mac, you can use Gemini 2. This is how this app looks.
Mac Disk Space Utility
You can download this little duplicate finder here.
Gemini 2 analyzes potential duplicates by many criteria, not just the name of the file. It searches for:
- Duplicate folders
- Duplicate movies
- Similar images
6. Learn to use Optimized Storage
Optimized Storage is the built-in feature of the macOS. It's a sorting algorithm that shows different categories of files on your Mac for review and removal.
4. Clean up the Downloads folder
Files love to hide in your Mac's Downloads folder. Old disk images, random photos, unused extensions, ZIP files… they're in there, not making a sound. Hiding. ?lick the Downloads stack in the OS X Dock and browse what's sitting in there, wasting space on your disk. Anything that's unnecessary can be dragged to the Trash.
5. Delete duplicate folders and files
How many times do we copy or download things twice? Like many users, I would prefer to have a backup twin of my important files. But that often ends up in my files being quadrupled…or what do they call a 4th or 5th copy of the same folder?
To effectively remove duplicate files and make space on Mac, you can use Gemini 2. This is how this app looks.
Mac Disk Space Utility
You can download this little duplicate finder here.
Gemini 2 analyzes potential duplicates by many criteria, not just the name of the file. It searches for:
- Duplicate folders
- Duplicate movies
- Similar images
6. Learn to use Optimized Storage
Optimized Storage is the built-in feature of the macOS. It's a sorting algorithm that shows different categories of files on your Mac for review and removal.
Click on the 🍎Apple Menu > About This Mac > Storage
Choose 'Manage…'
By far, the most-space demanding of your files will be Documents.
Using the quick tabs above you will decide what is there you can toss away.
Make sure to also check Recommendations (on top of the list). There are a couple more space-saving options there.
7. Delete your Desktop screenshots
Mac's Desktop is where you keep screenshots by default. macOS Mojave and its successor, macOS Catalina have a tool called 'Stacks' that organizes your Desktop into clearly labeled folders. One of such folders will be Screenshots which you can later remove in one sweep.
- Go to your desktop (press F3, or Fn + F11 if you use a TouchBar Mac)
- Right-click somewhere in the middle of your Desktop.
- Select 'Use Stacks'
Now you should see the Screenshots folder with all your screengrabs neatly stuffed inside.
Drag this folder to the Trash and empty it.
8. Get rid of system junk
It's not just your files that are hogging disk space — it's also useless system files like logs, cache, unused binaries, old iOS backups and installers, and what not. Fortunately, CleanMyMac can find and eliminate them all to make low disk space a thing of the past, at last.
System junk is comprised of:
User cache files
Application cache
Broken downloads
Unused .DMG installers
As you can see, the 'User cache' category alone can recover about 3 GB of space. So the best way to free up space on Mac is to start with this type of files.
With just a few clicks you'll discover what's where and what's ripe for deletion. The best way to free up hard drive space is to get CleanMyMac X for free and wave goodbye to space-hogging files. Don't worry. You won't miss them. Hopefully, you liked our tips on how to clear disk space on Mac — drop by for more Mac housekeeping tips😉
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