The Easiest Way to Free up Disk Space on Your Mac
If your Mac is running out of space, don’t ignore the problem. These machines may experience problems when their storage is 100% full: updates may not be installed; the car may slow down; applications may not work correctly; and you may notice that some also stop backing up their data to the cloud. To avoid all these problems, free up some space. It’s not as difficult as it seems.
Use built-in tools to free up space on your Mac
Apple provides you with many simple tools to help you start removing unnecessary files from your computer. First you need to determine what the problem is. Click the Apple logo in the top left corner of your Mac screen and choose System Preferences > General > Storage . Wait until all the loading signs disappear and you will understand why your Mac is running out of space. The Tips section offers an easy way to start the cleaning process. Here you can quickly unload unused apps, delete local copies of files stored in iCloud, automatically delete old files from the Trash with one click, and perform other useful functions.
Once you’ve completed these steps, you should have some breathing room, but you can go even further by clicking the i buttons next to each item in the list under the Recommendations section. For example, you can tap the i button next to Apps to see a full list of installed apps, sorted by size, and quickly remove apps you don’t use. Once you’re done with this, you should free up a lot of space.
Use DaisyDisk to clean up your Mac
Apple’s built-in method is generally pretty good to get you started, but if you want to remove all unnecessary data from your Mac, consider using the excellent DaisyDisk ($10). This app has been around for over a decade and has earned a reputation for freeing up space with ease. Once you open an app, you can run a scan to see which apps are taking up disk space. Once this is done, you can easily browse through different folders and place things in a collection area, which is similar to a shopping cart, that you want to delete. DaisyDisk lists all your folders by size and finds files that the built-in tool doesn’t miss. In my case, I discovered 80 GB of data on WhatsApp – files that were shared in a large group that I had disabled long ago and completely forgot about.
Once all the files are collected, you can click the Delete button to quickly delete them.
Try Hyperspace to get rid of the stragglers
Hyperspace should be the last stop in your Mac’s cleaning process. It cleans up storage space without deleting files . Here’s how it works.
Apple Filesystem (APFS) has a convenient space-saving feature that allows multiple files to share a single copy of data. For example, if you duplicate a 1GB file on macOS, you will notice that the copy is created instantly. Try copying the same file to an external drive, and no matter how fast the drive is, the copy will take a while. This happens because APFS simply creates a new file with fresh metadata and does not actually create a second copy of the data underneath it. This will save you a lot of space.
Hyperspace uses this APFS feature to find identical files and convert them into clones of each other. This means that you will continue to see the same number of files in the same original locations, but the application will use the APFS feature to free up space.
The explanation is a little complicated, but this app seems to work. Hyperspace is free to download and you can also scan your folders without paying. If these scans show that the application can save you a significant amount of space, you can pay to clean up these files. The app costs $10 per month, $20 per year, or a one-time purchase of $50.