Running Out Of Storage On Your Mac? Here's How To Free Up Space
It's not uncommon to run out of space on a Mac, but Apple's inbuilt storage management tool makes it easy to quickly delete large files and apps, and offload data to the cloud. Up until recently, Apple sold MacBooks with 128GB of storage as the base variant. While it was a popular choice among users who wanted a cheaper model, it also meant that storage was very limited. While Apple now offers 256GB as the base variant for Macs, it's still far behind Windows laptops where 512GB of storage is the norm.
When a Mac's storage is close to full, Apple will begin displaying warning messages asking users to free up space. While the Mac still remains functional, it can begin to slow down if there isn't enough available storage. Apps that save temporary files on a Mac may begin to get sluggish when there isn't free space. It may also become impossible to download larger files. Apple's macOS system updates also need a fair bit of free space to be installed. For instance, macOS Monterey needs at least 26GB of free space, while those upgrading from older releases need at least 44GB of storage to install the update.
The easiest way to check what's taking up space on a Mac is by using Apple's inbuilt storage management tool. This can be accessed by clicking on the Apple menu at the top left corner of the screen, and then on About This Mac. Click on the Storage tab to see how much free storage is available. Now click on Manage, which will open up the System Information tool, and wait a few minutes while the Mac calculates the storage taken up by various folders. The Recommendations window will display suggestions on how to quickly free up storage space. Users can click on Store in iCloud to transfer documents, photos, and messages to the cloud. Before choosing this option, it's important to make sure that an iCloud+ plan with enough storage has been purchased. Other options include optimizing storage by automatically removing watched movies and TV shows from Apple TV, emptying the bin automatically every 30 days, and reviewing all large documents stored on a Mac.
Users can also click on the left sidebar in System Information to see what else is taking up space. GarageBand, for example, takes up over 4GB of storage on a Mac. Just deleting the app from the Applications folder isn't enough. Users will also need to click on the Music Creation folder inside System Information and then on Remove GarageBand Sound Library to free up an additional 2.4GB of space. Similarly, if Photos are taking up too much storage, turning on iCloud Photos will store the original high-resolution files in the cloud, and keep optimized files on the Mac when storage runs low. From the storage management tool, click on Photos, then Turn on iCloud Photos and finally Store in iCloud to enable this.
There are a few other things users can try to free up storage. An easy way to free up a few GBs is by clicking on the Applications folder within System Information and then deleting any unsupported apps. Users can also delete any Apple apps that they might not require, such as iMovie, Pages, Keynote, and Numbers. The Mail app also takes up a fair bit of storage. While deleting older emails or junk mail is one way to clean it up, another way is to use the web version of email providers such as Gmail instead. Finally, if a Mac has been set up for multiple users, deleting accounts that are no longer being used can help to make space. Some older user profiles may have been deleted on a Mac, but their data and files might still be stored on the device.
Source: Apple