4 Easy Ways To Free Up Space On Your Mac
Harley Dixon There is nothing more frustrating that coming to do a software update on your Mac only to be left with error messages that you have run out of disk space. Unfortunately this happens often, even on modern, new machines. And most of us hardly have time to run those updates, never mind spend hours and hours trying to find out what is taking up the precious space and deleting and removing old files.
So how can you easily and quickly free up some much needed space on your Mac? Take a look at these 4 tips:
Empty That Trash Bin
One of the easiest and simplest ways to free up space on your Mac is to empty the trash bin. This may seem obvious but this simple task is often looked over. In the rush to free up disk space, many people spent hours going through their old content, deleting big or unused files. However, without emptying these files from the trash, no space will actually be created. Trash files are only permanently deleted after 30 days unless you manually empty the bin yourself.
Save Your Content On iCloud
Storing your files on iCloud will help you save storage space on your device itself, while still providing easy access to all your files. The ‘Store in iCloud’ button under the Storage Management section of your website is where you need to go to get started. You can choose which files you want to store in iCloud, such as documents, photos and messages. The device will automatically transfer files over to the cloud when additional storage space is needed by the device, keeping only those that you have recently opened.
Your old files will still be easily accessible in your folders but unfortunately you won’t be able to open them when you are offline, rather you will need to download the original file. Also storing of these files will take part of your iCloud storage plan with plans starting at around USD$0.99 for 50GB.
Optimize Storage
The ‘Optimize Storage’ button on your Mac provides an easy way to troll through your old files and see which ones can be removed, without actually doing the work yourself. Watched movies and TV Shows that you have downloaded from Apple via iTunes will automatically be removed from your device. In addition, old email attachments will also be removed. All these files can easily be redownloaded if you do discover you need them at a later stage.
Reduce Clutter
Similar to the ‘Optimize Storage’ function, ‘Reduce Clutter’ assists in identifying large files you no longer need, making your machine faster for online games. Through the Reduce Clutter function you can easily identify unused applications and files on your Mac, see how much space they are using and remove those you no longer need. You can delete these files directly from the Reduce Clutter section of your Mac.
All of the above is easily done by navigating to the Apple button on the top left of your device, clicking About This Mac and then Storage which will open up your storage management options.