How to Cleanup Mac Disk Space to Increase Storage?

When you look at the Mac models in Apple store, all types (Macbook, Macbook Pro and Macbook Air) are sold starting from 512GB. This is a decent storage space for a solid state drive (SSD). But the storage space can quickly wiped of based on your usage over the period of time. For example, storing huge number of high quality photos, videos, audios and downloading large disk image (.dmg) files will quickly eat up the disk space.

It is important to keep your mac’s disk space free, in order to easily access the documents. It will also allow your Mac to run faster without sluggishness. In this article let us explore how to cleanup your Mac.

Preliminary Cleanup

1. Cleanup Your Desktop

This is a first step to make your Mac clean and looks pretty. Delete all the unnecessary files on your desktop.

Cluttered Mac Desktop

We recommend, you can organize the files in an easily accessibly manner and store inside the “Documents” folder. Remember you can customize the options available in the right sidebar of the “Finder”. So cleanup your desktop and choose to view the desktop when finder is opened.

This will not only help your housekeeping easy but also load the finder faster.

2. Cleanup That Trash Bin Too

Most of us never have the habit of cleaning up the trash bin. Over the period of time large number of deleted files will start accumulating in the trash. This will not only occupy the storage space but also slow down your applications.

You can easily setup auto cleaning for trash with every 30 days. Let us look at that option later in this article.

3. Delete Unwanted Applications

Over the period of time everyone will install and uninstall multiple apps. Some of the old apps you downloaded from internet may not even work with the latest macOS version. So it’s a good time to look out how many application you have inside the “Applications” folder and delete all unwanted ones.

Using Default Mac Storage Tools

Mac offers some built-in tools to keep your storage space free. Click on the apple icon on the top left corner of your mac and go to “About This Mac”. Click on the “Storage” tab to see the available space on your SSD.

Viewing Storage in Mac

Click on the “Manage” button to go to the “System Information” application. Alternatively you can press command + spacebar to open spotlight search and look for “system information” application.

Apple offer four useful options here to free up the disk space.

Mac Default Cleanup Options

1. Store in iCloud

Before using this option ensure you know what is iCloud and purchased storage space. iCloud offers 5GB of free space which is not sufficient to use this option since your SSD drive should have 512GB space already.

Click on the “Store in iCloud…” button and enable this option. When your Mac is running out of storage space, this option will automatically help to move files and photos to your iCloud drive. Only those recently accessed files and optimized photos will remain on the Mac’s storage space thus allowing you to free up the space.

2. Optimized Storage

This option is for those who watch movies and TV shows in iTunes. Enabling this will help to delete all the watched medias and old email attachments from your Mac. Only the recent email attachments will be kept in the “Mail Downloads” folder thus allowing to have sufficient free space.

3. Empty Trash Automatically

Enable this option to automatically cleanup the deleted files in your trash bin every 30 days.

4. Reduce Clutter

Probably this is the most useful option though you need to manually look in to the size of the files. Clicking on the “Review Files” will take you to sidebar items where you can see the size occupied by the files.

If you organized all working files under “Documents” folder, you can easily view the file size in one single place. Under “Documents” tab you can see three options like large files, downloads and file browser.

Checkout the larger and unwanted files and delete them to increase the storage.

Using Third Party Apps

Well, if you are not happy with the default option then no need to worry. There are handful of fancy apps available in the Mac App Store for system cleanup. Out of those we explain here with Dr. Cleaner. This app offer basic features for free with an option to upgrade.

Below is how the app will look like after installation on your Mac. Along with the CPU / Network usage, you have two options to cleanup junk files and optimize memory.

Dr.Cleaner Showing the Status

After optimization, you can see there are no junk files in the system.

Dr.Cleaner After Optimizing

Clicking on the “System Optimizer” button will show all the options offered by Dr. Cleaner.

• Junk Files (Free) – scan and remove junk files
• Big Files (Free) – scan and remove bigger files
• Disk Map (Free) – view the folders similar to default “Reduce Clutter” option explained above.

Big and junk files can be scanned and deleted in bulk. You can either send the deleted files to trash or choose to delete permanently.

Finding Junk Files with Dr Cleaner

The remaining options – Duplicate Files, App Manager and File Shredder – are premium options. But you can still use those options to find the files and apps occupying the storage. Purchasing is required only if you want to cleanup those items.

Finding Duplicate Files with Dr Cleaner

When you delete the apps, the files outside the “Applications” folder created by the app will not be deleted by default. Dr. Cleaner will remind you there are left over files and allow you to deep uninstall the apps completely from your Mac.