Does your Mac have unusual slowdowns? Can not archive new files because there is no free space on the disk or are you continuously shown a warning message of the full boot disk? The time has probably come to free up space on the Mac and in this article I will show you some tips to erase unnecessary end, find and delete duplicate data and free space on the Mac disk to work without problems and store many other data.
Using the computer every day, working with important projects and heavy, surfing the internet and importing photos or videos are all activities that inevitably cause an accumulation of data on the Mac hard disk rather important that with time, they make full disk messages appear or insufficient space. But how to free space on Mac effectively, safely and quickly, thus obtaining more memory to make the Mac more powerful and with free space to be able to save new data?
Make room on the Mac and free the disk: useful tips
There are various procedures to be applied to free space on the Mac disk, obviously make sure that all your important data is saved on another external hard drive, USB stick or in a safe folder of the computer: in these paragraphs I will point out 5 useful tips for free up space in the Mac and regain a performance system in just a few minutes.
Close and restart the applications
All the apps that we run on the Mac, in addition to requiring resources to RAM and CPU, always use space from the Mac hard disk to be able to correctly run all the processes; unfortunately some of the heaviest applications like Photoshop, Final Cut Pro X, Logic Pro X and many others, require a larger amount of space on the disk since managing very bulky projects, often resort to resources on the hard disk especially if we do not have much RAM.
To free space on your Mac quickly and easily, one of the preliminary steps you need to perform is to permanently close applications when they are not used; the correct way to terminate a program can be reached via the CMD + Q keyboard shortcut.
Moreover, if you have the habit of not turning off the Mac but leaving it in Stop mode, it is a good idea to routinely complete the system: in this way, besides freeing up the Mac, we will free the processor altogether, RAM and other components from resources and temporary data that we do not need and that could still be trapped in these components due to some software bugs, incorrectly closed processes and other causes.
Free the Download folder
A second suggestion to free space on Mac affects the Download folder of the computer, in fact, surfing the internet every day we often download video files, zip folders, images, PDF and other documents that very often after viewing leave in the folder downloads for months, or even years, without ever reopening them. In many cases, there may be installation files for some compressed programs or archives that also take up several GB of disk space on the Mac and it would be useful to delete them to free up memory.
Then go to the Mac Download folder and very carefully proceed to check and delete files that you do not use; if there are thousands of files in the folder, a quick way to know the most cumbersome ones is as follows:
- open the Download folder
- set the list view
- sort the list by decreasing size by clicking on this item at the top until a down arrow appears next to Size
This way you can free space from the Mac by deleting even a few files, but the most cumbersome, which you probably did not even know you have stored on the disk in the past.
Empty the trash
It’s a discounted suggestion, but in many cases especially if the trash can icon is not in the desktop or in the dock, you might forget to empty the Mac’s trash bin to free up useful space from the boot disk.
To empty the trash and free space on your Mac, choose one of these methods:
- if macOS shows you the trash icon, right-click on it and choose Empty Trash;
- open the Finder, click on Go> Go to the folder in the top menu bar and type ~/.Trash to access the recycle bin, then select the existing files and right click on them, choose Delete now
- open Terminal, type this command rm-rf~/.Trash/* and press Enter
In this way, you can also free up several hundred MB or GB by simply erasing some files stored in the trash for a long time from your computer or that you thought you had deleted but are still taking up useful space on the Mac disk.
Find and delete duplicate files
A common problem that causes the use of a lot of space on the Mac’s hard disk is the presence of duplicate files: many software copy files imported into them inside libraries, and without our knowledge the same file will occupy its space twice; if the file in question weighs several GBs, it could become really a problem to have many duplicate files.
In this case, to find and delete duplicate files in order to free space on Mac we have to resort to software developed by third parties (available for free or paid), usually simple to use able to perform a full disk scan, list double files and allow us to select and delete them completely; the software that can do all this is Gemini 2, Duplicate File Finder or DupeGuro. Download and install the software you prefer, have your disk scanned and double files deleted.
Uninstall unused apps
Permanently deleting the programs that we do not use is another very valid way to free space on the Mac effectively; then, open the Applications folder and after finding the apps you do not need or do not use for a long time, drag them to the trash bin or use the CMD + Backspace command to remove them. Of course, to uninstall an app and free up space on your Mac disk permanently, you’ll have to remember to empty the Recycle Bin using one of the methods mentioned in the previous paragraph.
Another procedure to uninstall the apps that I recommend you to follow requires the use of the free AppCleaner app that can be downloaded free of charge from the official Freemacsoft.net website: this application allows the deep deletion of an app, since it will not only move the software in the trash bin but will help you find all the temporary files and preferably that the program has deposited in the various folders on the Mac, allowing you to uninstall a program without leaving any trace and free space on the Mac even more consistent.