Save Space on Your Mac by Turning Off Unnecessary Automatic Downloads
If you’ve owned a Mac for a long time, you can have a variety of things – from podcasts to iOS apps – set to automatically download. This is usually pointless for most of us nowadays. Here’s where you can check if you’re wasting precious hard drive space.
There are two main places where your Mac can automatically download software: the Mac App Store and iTunes. If you’re on a Mac without a lot of hard drive space, space is limited, so you don’t want to waste it on unnecessary junk. So, it’s worth double checking to make sure you’re not automatically downloading software, podcasts, or videos that you don’t need.
Check App Store Downloads
- Go to System Preferences> App Store.
- Check your settings and uncheck any downloads you don’t need. If you have a desktop or laptop computer, you can turn off the “Automatically download apps purchased on other Macs” option on your laptop.
Disable automatic downloads in iTunes
- Open iTunes and go to iTunes> Preferences.
- Select the Store tab.
- Uncheck any checkboxes under Automatic Downloads that you do not want to download. For example, if you have an iOS device, you can safely uncheck the Apps checkbox. This means that you will be performing all updates and application downloads directly to your phone and not in iTunes.
- If you don’t use iTunes for podcasts, make sure iTunes doesn’t download podcasts on its own just because you’re using the Apple podcast app on iOS (but you shouldn’t actually use the Apple podcast app ). Back in iTunes, go to the Podcasts tab. Uncheck the box next to “Automatically download new episodes for your subscriptions.”
Obviously only disable things you don’t need to automatically download, but there’s a reasonable chance that if you’re a longtime Mac owner, you’re still downloading unnecessary things you don’t need anymore because you’ve never logged in and disabled some of them.