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Disk Full? Free up disk space on your Mac with these tips!

13:30 video

Cleaning out your Mac’s storage is trickier than it was ten years ago. macOS has added a lot of background file management, so it’s hard to figure out where your space went, especially with a 128 GB or 256 GB SSD. And because Apple’s storage is so fast, you may not notice you’re running out of space until a warning pops up; in earlier days you could feel a drag with only 10–15% free, but on these Macs you don’t feel it until the bitter end.

1. Remove apps you don’t use

Open the Applications folder in list view, click Size to sort biggest to smallest. At the top of mine was Install macOS Ventura, which I’d downloaded to create a VM and no longer needed. Select an app and press Command-Delete, or drag it to the Trash. I don’t use iMovie, GarageBand, Pages or Descript anymore, so I deleted them (use Shift-click or Command-click to select several), then emptied the Trash.

2. Remove apps completely, with CleanMyMac X

Deleting an app from Applications is only one step: it doesn’t remove the settings and little files it puts around the system. Most companies have instructions to remove those by hand, but CleanMyMac X helps. In its Uninstaller, select an app and click Uninstall to remove it and its extra files. In Leftovers, you’ll see abandoned files with no associated app: I’d dragged Citrix Workspace to the Trash, and it still had a couple of files left, which you can remove from here.

CleanMyMac X isn’t free; it’s about $35, or available in the Setapp subscription. It has other features: System Junk scans for caches and other things you don’t need. Pretty much everything in the user cache files category can be deleted without issues, since it gets rebuilt as needed (Safari, Messages and so on). After removing a few apps, I got to 22 GB free.

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3. macOS storage settings

On Ventura: System Settings → General → Storage. Before Ventura: Apple menu → About This Mac → Storage → Manage. You get a breakdown by category and recommendations. On mine, Messages used about 10 GB and Photos about 10 GB.

Recommendations:

  • Optimize Storage for Apple TV: removes shows and movies you’ve watched from local storage, since you can get them again.
  • Empty Trash Automatically: deletes anything that’s been in the Trash for 30 days.
  • Documents: I have nearly 80 GB of files; click the i to see the large files, sortable by size or name, then right-click to delete. You also see Downloads and unsupported apps (if you migrated from an Intel Mac, some apps can’t run on Apple silicon).
  • iCloud Drive: click the i → Open Apple Account settings → turn on Optimize Mac Storage, so files you aren’t using stay on iCloud and don’t keep a local copy until needed.

4. Messages

Messages had over 10 GB. Click the i to see large attachments (old videos, photos and files from iMessage) and delete one or many. Or reduce how long you keep messages: in Messages → Settings → Keep Messages, change Forever (probably your default) to 1 Year or 30 Days. That could be a big problem if you use Messages to keep photos and videos from friends and family, but it can reduce space a lot.

5. Photos

Photos used 9.63 GB. In Photos → Settings, choose Optimize Mac Storage: it keeps small copies of many photos on the Mac and pulls the full ones from iCloud on demand. That’s huge, since having all your originals downloaded could take 40, 60 or 80 GB. It slowly removes the large copies from your Mac while keeping them on iCloud.

6. OmniDiskSweeper (free)

A free utility that shows all your files and finds the biggest. Open it, double-click your system drive, and it calculates: mine was about 181 GB used, with my user folder the largest at 138 GB. Drilling in, my temp folder had a very old Final Cut project I trashed. It also gets into folders the system tool doesn’t: in Library, the biggest was Messages, and under Application Support, Descript used 3 GB, so I should remove it with CleanMyMac X. Some Movies files are probably leftovers from Final Cut projects.

7. If it’s still not enough

You’re left with external storage. I recommend the OWC Envoy Pro FX, a Thunderbolt 3 drive that won my comparison of four Thunderbolt drives: it’s really fast, about 2,500 MB/s read and write.

Are there better apps for finding and removing old stuff from your Mac? Let me know.

In this video

  • 0:00 Applications
  • 2:06 Apps 2 and App Junk
  • 6:24 Mac Recommendations, iCloud, Photos
  • 11:05 All other files

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