No matter how spacious your MacBook hard disk is, it’ll soon fill up to the brim, owing to the plenitude of media files you store on it. You can increase a bit of disk space on your Mac OS by trimming away the files and programs you don’t need. However, if you want to really free up disk space on Mac OS, you’ll have to dig deeper. How to do so? Walk through the post to learn more.
Free Up Disk Space on Mac OS
Empty the Trash Can
This goes without saying that keeping the trash can on your system clean and empty saves you a great deal of space. Furthermore, empty the trash folders of the apps like iPhoto, iMovie, and Mail to keep them clean as well, especially if you tend to create regular backups of your files.
Remove Application Caches
The number of the cache files stored by applications, if not removed, can increase over time, leading to the loss of the valuable disk space. For instance, web browsers like Safari save cache files of the frequently visited sites. By removing these cache files, you can save a large room on your disk.
You’ll have to visit two locations on your Mac to remove application cache files:
- Macintosh HD > Library > Caches
- [Your Home Folder] > Library > Caches
Compress Old Media Files
If you find a file too large or old, you can compress it. By compressing the file, you’ll reduce the disk space it takes on your Mac. You can then move it to external storage to free up disk space on Mac OS. You can use the Zip built-in file compression utility on Mac OS to do the task.
- Select the files and folders you wish to compress
- Create a Zip file archive by right-clicking and select Compress Items
- Now, delete the original, uncompressed file
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Archive Emails and Delete Attachments
You can free up disk space on Mac OS by archiving old emails and deleting attachments. The reason behind this is that attachments can be too large to be kept for long on your MacBook. And by getting rid of these can really make a big difference in the disk space.
In order to archive an email, do as follows:
- Select the email you wish to archive
- Right-click and select Archive
If you want to keep the size of your mailbox small to the possible extent, you should remove attachments from messages and keep them stored in local folders on your Mac OS. Once moved, you can then reduce their size by many ways viz. compression or deletion.
In order to remove attachments from emails, follow the steps below:
- Choose the email from which you’d like to remove attachments
- Select Remove Attachments from Message menu
Delete Duplicate Files
Your MacBook creates duplicate files without your knowledge. These duplicate files include identical files having only different file names. To remove such duplicate copies of your original content, choose one the ways below:
- Open the Mac App Store and download a third-party app to remove duplicate files
- Use Finder to do the task
- You can remove duplicate files by using a command or script in Terminal
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