![]() ![]() As a result, the media stored in iTunes is often the single largest consumer of your Mac’s precious storage space. Since its first appearance in 2001, iTunes has grown from a humble MP3 manager to massive application which handles music, movies, TV shows, podcasts, audiobooks, and iOS apps. You can also empty the trash on your Mac by right-clicking on the Trash icon in your Dock and choosing Empty Trash, or by launching Finder and using the keyboard shortcut Shift-Command-Delete. To do this, just open Finder, select Finder in the menu bar at the top of the screen, and click Empty Trash. This one seems kind of obvious, but you’d be amazed at the number of Macs I see that’ve had files sitting in the trash for years. This can help you identify which files are the oldest or largest, helping you quickly find good candidates for deletion. Almost all disk images, for example, can be deleted (as you can typically download those installers from where you originally got them on the web).Īnother handy tip is to change to List View (keyboard shortcut Command-2 or the icon with parallel lines in the Finder toolbar) and sort your files by date (by clicking on the Date Modified column header), or size (by clicking on the Size header). Once that folder opens, spend a bit of time looking through it and trashing what you don’t want. To check out your own Downloads folder, launch Finder and find Downloads listed in the sidebar. The Downloads folder is the default location for all of the files you download in Safari, Chrome, or Firefox, but thanks to the way that these browsers can automatically open or launch files once they’re downloaded, many users build up a huge pile of old and unneeded junk in this folder. You’ll probably need a paid storage tier for your iCloud account (that 5GB of free space doesn’t go too far), but if you have free space in iCloud, you can completely back up your device without needing a byte of space on your Mac. You may be surprised at just how much free space these iDevice backups can consume! If you’re really aching to free up some space, also consider deleting all of your local iDevice backups and backing up to iCloud instead. If any of the upgrades in this list are no longer needed, just click to select one of them and press the Delete Backup button. While I don’t necessarily recommend deleting your current iPhone or iPad backup, check this list to see if you have any old or redundant backups, for example, those from old iPhones you traded in or those made before an iOS upgrade (as long as the upgrade went well). These backups are important but can take up a lot of space depending on the capacity of your iDevice and the amount of data stored on it at the time the backup was made. If you open iTunes and choose iTunes> Preferences from the menu bar at the top of the screen, you can then click on the “Devices” tab to see a list of iOS backups you’ve saved on your Mac. Looks like I’m OK for now, but if your free space is down to 10GB or less, get crackin’ on cleaning stuff up! Here are some suggestions on where to start. To check out how much storage you have and how much you’re using, choose the “About This Mac” option under the Apple Menu at the top-left of your screen and then click on the “Storage” tab: While Apple plans to help automate user storage with the “Optimized Storage” feature in the upcoming macOS Sierra, if your Mac is telling you that it’s running out of space today, or you think you’re close to the limit, the first thing to do is check your current storage usage. ![]() After all, if your Mac doesn’t have enough space to do its own housekeeping or even to save files anymore, you’ll see all sorts of weird behavior, including poor performance, the dreaded spinning beach balls, or even more serious trouble. If you’ve seen the scary “your startup disk is almost full” message, then something has to be done.
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