1. How To Open Mac Files
2. How To Free Up Other Space On Mac
3. How To Free Other Space On Mac Windows 10
4. How To Free Up Other Space On Mac

The Optimized Storage features of your Mac help you save storage space by storing your content in iCloud and making it available on demand:

Get rid of everything else from Other disk space. Even Other storage space has its own “other” files, and no, the irony of that statement is not lost on us. Other storage on Mac can also include: Files in your user library (screen savers, for example). Files Spotlight search doesn’t recognize. Select the Windows disk, click Erase, choose the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format, and then click the Erase button. (picture is below) Step 3: Shrink Mac partition to release more free space. Step 4: Create a new large Windows partition in the free space. Select the drive. Select the Partition tab; Click + to add a partition.

• When storage space is needed, files, photos, movies, email attachments, and other files that you seldom use are stored in iCloud automatically.
• Each file stays right where you last saved it, and downloads when you open it.
• Files that you’ve used recently remain on your Mac, along with optimized versions of your photos.

If you haven't yet upgraded to macOS Sierra or later, learn about other ways to free up storage space.

Find out how much storage is available on your Mac

Choose Apple menu  > About This Mac, then click Storage. Each segment of the bar is an estimate of the storage space used by a category of files. Move your pointer over each segment for more detail.

Click the Manage button to open the Storage Management window, pictured below.

Manage storage on your Mac

The Storage Management window offers recommendations for optimizing your storage. If some recommendations are already turned on, you will see fewer recommendations.

Store in iCloud

Click the Store in iCloud button, then choose from these options:

• Desktop and Documents. Store all files from these two locations in iCloud Drive. When storage space is needed, only the files you recently opened are kept on your Mac, so that you can easily work offline. Files stored only in iCloud show a download icon , which you can double-click to download the original file. Learn more about this feature.
  
• Photos. Store all original, full-resolution photos and videos in iCloud Photos. When storage space is needed, only space-saving (optimized) versions of photos are kept on your Mac. To download the original photo or video, just open it.
  
• Messages. Store all messages and attachments in iCloud. When storage space is needed, only the messages and attachments you recently opened are kept on your Mac. Learn more about Messages in iCloud.

Storing files in iCloud uses the storage space in your iCloud storage plan. If you reach or exceed your iCloud storage limit, you can either buy more iCloud storage or make more iCloud storage available. iCloud storage starts at 50GB for $0.99 (USD) a month, and you can purchase additional storage directly from your Apple device. Learn more about prices in your region.

Optimize Storage

Click the Optimize button to save space by automatically removing watched movies and TV shows. When storage space is needed, movies or TV shows that you purchased from Apple and already watched are removed from your Mac. Click the download icon next to a movie or TV show to download it again.

Your Mac will also save space by keeping only recent email attachments on this Mac when storage space is needed. You can manually download any attachments at any time by opening the email or attachment, or saving the attachment to your Mac.

Optimizing storage for movies, TV shows, and email attachments doesn't require iCloud storage space.

Empty Trash Automatically

Empty Trash Automatically permanently deletes files that have been in the Trash for more than 30 days.

Reduce Clutter

Reduce Clutter helps you identify large files and files you might no longer need. Click the Review Files button, then choose any of the file categories in the sidebar, such as Applications, Documents, Music Creation, or Trash.

How To Open Mac Files

You can delete the files in some categories directly from this window. Other categories show the total storage space used by the files in each app. You can then open the app and decide whether to delete files from within it.

Learn how to redownload apps, music, movies, TV shows, and books.

Where to find the settings for each feature

The button for each recommendation in the Storage Management window affects one or more settings in other apps. You can also control those settings directly within each app.

• If you're using macOS Catalina or later, choose Apple menu  > System Preferences, click Apple ID, then select iCloud in the sidebar: Store in iCloud turns on the Optimize Mac Storage setting on the right. To turn off iCloud Drive entirely, deselect iCloud Drive.
• If you're using macOS Mojave or earlier, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click iCloud, then click Options next to iCloud Drive. Store in iCloud turns on the Desktop & Documents Folders and Optimize Mac Storage settings.
• In Photos, choose Photos > Preferences, then click iCloud. Store in iCloud selects iCloud Photos and Optimize Mac Storage.
• In Messages, choose Messages > Preferences, then click iMessage. Store in iCloud selects Enable Messages in iCloud.

• If you're using macOS Catalina or later, open the Apple TV app, choose TV > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Files. Optimize Storage selects “Automatically delete watched movies and TV shows.”
• In you're using macOS Mojave or earlier, open iTunes, choose iTunes > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Advanced. Optimize Storage selects “Automatically delete watched movies and TV shows.”
• In Mail, choose Mail > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Accounts. In the Account Information section on the right, Optimize Storage sets the Download Attachments menu to either Recent or None.

Empty Trash Automatically: From the Finder, choose Finder > Preferences, then click Advanced. Empty Trash Automatically selects “Remove items from the Trash after 30 days.”

Other ways that macOS helps automatically save space

With macOS Sierra or later, your Mac automatically takes these additional steps to save storage space:

• Detects duplicate downloads in Safari, keeping only the most recent version of the download
• Reminds you to delete used app installers
• Removes old fonts, languages, and dictionaries that aren't being used
• Clears caches, logs, and other unnecessary data when storage space is needed

How to free up storage space manually

Even without using the Optimized Storage features described in this article, you can take other steps to make more storage space available:

• Music, movies, and other media can use a lot of storage space. Learn how to delete music, movies, and TV shows from your device.
• Delete other files that you no longer need by moving them to the Trash, then emptying the Trash. The Downloads folder is good place to look for files that you might no longer need.
• Move files to an external storage device.
• Compress files.
• Delete unneeded email: In the Mail app, choose Mailbox > Erase Junk Mail. If you no longer need the email in your Trash mailbox, choose Mailbox > Erase Deleted Items.

Learn more

• The Storage pane of About This Mac is the best way to determine the amount of storage space available on your Mac. Disk Utility and other apps might show storage categories such as Not Mounted, VM, Recovery, Other Volumes, Other, Free, or Purgeable. Don't rely on these categories to understand how to free up storage space or how much storage space is available for your data.
• When you duplicate a file on an APFS-formatted volume, that file doesn't use additional storage space on the volume. Deleting a duplicate file frees up only the space required by any data you might have added to the duplicate. If you no longer need any copies of the file, you can recover all of the storage space by deleting both the duplicate and the original file.
• If you're using a pro app and Optimize Mac Storage, learn how to make sure that your projects are always on your Mac and able to access their files.

Is your Mac dangerously close to running out of storage? Usually, you can go on a short disk cleaning spree and free up a lot of space quickly. But sometimes, it’s just not that simple.

A while back, we talked about the somewhat baffling “Other” storage that can end up consuming tens—if not hundreds—of gigabytes of disk space. This time, we shall focus on another perplexing issue: how to reduce a bloated “System” storage on the Mac.

What Is System Storage?

Whenever you go to Applemenu > About This Mac > Storage, the Mac’s internal storage indicator will display the amount of data related to the operating system as “System” storage.

Ideally, it should stay under 20 gigabytes, but you can expect it to keep growing slowly as you keep using your Mac. If it exceeds that by double or triple-digits, however, then here are the most common reasons why that happens:

• Local Time Machine snapshots.
• Large application log files.
• Bloated application or system cache.
• Broken Spotlight Search index.

If your Mac has a very large “System” storage allocation, the pointers that follow should you help reduce it. Don’t forget to clear the Trash and check the Storage screen frequently as you work your way through them.

Remove Local Time Machine Snapshots

If you have Time Machine enabled on your Mac, you may end up with a chunk of “System” storage well beyond the usual size limits. That happens when the operating system fails to clear older Time Machine snapshots from the internal storage. It’s best to check and get rid of them using Terminal.

Note: If possible, create a fresh Time Machine backup with your external backup drive connected before you go ahead.

1. Go to Finder > Applications > Utilities and open Terminal.

2. Type tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates and press Enter to bring up a list of all local Time Machine snapshots along with their relevant date tags.

3. You must delete the local Time Machine snapshots individually (starting with the oldest) and check if that reduces “System” within your Mac’s Storage screen.

Type tmutil deletelocalsnapshots followed by the date and name of the snapshot. Then, press Enter to delete it.

Repeat as needed, but avoid deleting the most recent snapshots. If you have your external backup drive around, however, you can safely delete all of them with the following command:

for snapshot in $(tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates | grep -v :); do sudo tmutil deletelocalsnapshots $snapshot; done

Delete Application Log Files

If you’ve used your Mac for some time, it may contain lots of application log files. In some cases, these files can end up consuming multiple gigabytes of storage. You can check and delete them by heading over to the Logs folder within the Mac’s user library.

1. Open Finder. Then, select Go > Go to Folder.

2. Type ~/Library/Logs/ and press Enter.

3. Check for any oversized log files and delete them. To make things easier, you can switch to List view (from the top of the Finder window) and use the Size column to sort the log files by size.

Delete Connection Log Files

Application logs aside, your Mac may also contain massive connection log files related to the Mail app. It’s best to check and get rid of them.

1. Open Finder. Then, select Go > Go to Folder.

2. Type the following folder path and press Enter:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Logs/Mail

3. Delete any large connection log files inside the directory.

Delete System and Application Cache

Both the operating system and the various applications that run on your Mac frequently cache lots of files. That helps speed things up, but sometimes, the application and the system caches can balloon out of control and ramp up the “System” reading. Try clearing out any large file caches.

Tip: For a complete walkthrough, check how to clear the Mac cache.

1. Open Finder. Then, select Go > Go to Folder.

2. Type ~/Library/Caches/ and press Enter to open the application cache.

3. Switch to List view and sort the files and folders using the Size column. Then, delete any oversized items within the directory.

Note: If Finder doesn’t display folder sizes in List view, open View on the menu bar, select Show View Options, check the box next to Calculate all sizes, and select Use as Defaults.

4. Restart your Mac. If everything looks good, clear the Trash.

5. Repeat steps 1–4, but use the path /Library/Caches/ (which opens the system cache) in step 2 instead.

How To Free Up Other Space On Mac

Enter/Exit Safe Mode

Booting into Safe Mode can help remove redundant or obsolete system-related files on your Mac. To do that, start by turning off your Mac. Power it back on, but immediately press and hold the Shift key until you see the Apple logo.

After your Mac boots into Safe Mode, go to Apple menu > About This Mac > Storage. Wait for a couple of minutes until the storage indicator updates itself completely. Then, restart your Mac normally and see if that helped.

Rebuild Spotlight Index

Sometimes, your Mac may display an incorrect “System” storage reading due to a broken Spotlight Search index. Try rebuilding it to help reduce system storage on Mac.

1. Open the Apple menu, choose System Preferences, and select Spotlight.

2. Switch to the Privacy tab. Then, drag and drop the system drive from your desktop inside it.

Note: If the system drive is not visible on the desktop, open Finder, and select Preferences on the Finder menu. Then, check the box next to Hard disks.

3. Select OK to confirm that you want Spotlight Search to stop searching the system drive.

How To Free Other Space On Mac Windows 10

4. Wait for a moment. Then, select the system drive that you just added and remove it using the Delete ( — ) button.

That should prompt Spotlight Search to re-index the system drive.

Too Complicated? Use Onyx

How To Free Up Other Space On Mac

If the methods above to reduce system storage on your Mac seem too tedious, try using Onyx. It’s a completely free application that can quickly delete local Time Machine snapshots, remove outdated log files, clear the application and system caches, and rebuild the Spotlight index.

Onyx also works as a junk removal tool. If you keep running into storage-related issues on your Mac regularly, we highly recommend that you use it. Here’s a complete Onyx walkthrough.