If you have just had a notification flash up on your screen telling you your storage is full, you are not alone – we’ve all been there. If you’ve owned your Apple Mac for a while now, over time you are bound to use up the storage, so much so that it is completely full. When this happens, your laptop will still run, however, you will no longer be able to save any new documents or download things when browsing the internet.
To clear your storage on your Apple Mac, there are a number of ways in which you can do so. Here are four ways to clean up your Mac Hard Drive.
Remove unused apps
When was the last time you reviewed the apps that you have installed on your Mac? Here could be a good place to start! The longer you have used your Mac for, the more apps that you likely have installed. The chances are there are a number of apps that can be removed that are taking unnecessary storage on your laptop. With apps being easily installed, every couple of months, take a look through your downloaded apps to see if any can be removed. This will not only tidy up your Mac but also reduce the chances of your hard drive filling up.
Remove duplicate files
Your downloads folder is often the biggest culprit for duplicate files. When downloading files from the internet, they get stored in your downloads folder. Often, you will forget what you have downloaded and instead of taking the time to find your document, you simply redownload it. Photos are another area that often gets duplicated, especially if you like to edit them and save multiple versions to make sure you don’t lose the photo. Just like reviewing your unused apps, take a moment every month or two to check for duplicate files and remove them.
Clean up your desktop
If your desktop is flooded with apps and documents, this could be a good place to start when trying to clean up your Mac Hard Drive. Out of ease, a lot of Apple users will store their files and documents on their desktop and then forget they are there. Over time this can build up, causing unnecessary wastage to your hard drive and it can slow the laptop down. Take a quick look over your desktop and remove anything that you haven’t used in the last month or two. If you are not sure if you will need it again, you could always save it in the cloud system that way it’s not taking up any physical space on your Apple Mac.
Delete mail attachments
You may not realise this but when someone sends you an email with an attachment, that takes up space on your hard drive. The more emails with attachments you receive the more space that is going to be used up. If you aren’t using these attachments, they could be taking up a lot of space that you could be using for other documents. To check how many emails you have with attachments, load up your emails and then sort by attachments and size. Then delete any emails that you no longer require. If you want to keep the email you could just delete the attachment.