Still, Applications and Documents are the sections where you will declutter the most and the fastest. If you've got a tool you use once a year, you can of course delete it now to save space, but you have to know what it was to get it back.
Plus it rather assumes you will remember what apps you have. More commonly, and just as with storing documents in iCloud, it assumes you will always have a great internet connection wherever you are. It's a bit of a rosy view of the App Store, though, as apps do disappear from that.
The company says that because it claims you can then download them again from the App Store whenever you want. We'd be wary of deleting applications, but it is a quick way to reclaim quite a bit of space What macOS does is show you a list of all the large files you've got, so that you can make some swift decisions to potentially clear up a lot of space in one go. But it's also something only you can make decisions about. This is the reason you're tight on space. What this really does is switch from the Recommendations section to the Documents one. The reason you'll use and come back to this Manage feature, though, is Review Files.
Choose this and your Mac will remove any TV you've already watched - if they're from Apple TV or iTunes. "Optimize Storage" is both a quick fix and a longer term solution. However, also frankly, this is more of a future preventative aid rather than something that will regain you some space right now. Turn this on, and your Mac will permanently erase anything in the Trash that's over 30 days old.įrankly, if it's been there that long, you don't need it. Yet if you're, say, travelling with a MacBook Pro, you could find that the document you need is not available to you.Īt the simpler end of the scale, Empty Trash Automatically is a clearer decision. If you're certain you will always have a great internet connection then perhaps this is an obvious win.
How much gets saved on iCloud depends on how low on space you are, and how much iCloud storage you have. These overall options are useful, but you'll get more from the sections on the left. This can put everything, all files, photos and messages, into iCloud, and leave only the most recent of them actually on your Mac.
The biggest, in terms of making a significant difference, is Store in iCloud. The more you use Recommendations, the less useful it gets, but initially it has several sections that you should think about. When you click on Manage, you get a pane with sections down the side, of which Recommendations is selected. This boot bar drive will also include a button marked Manage. Typically you'll see segments for Documents, Mail, System, Apps and so on. The bar for the boot drive will include color-coded segments showing how much space is taken up by what. With the boot drive, though, you get more. In each case, you'll get a bar showing how much space has been used and how much remains free. This will show you a list of connected storage, whether SSD or hard drives.
Then rather than try to manually delete enough space to install a third-party declutter app, go to the Apple menu and choose About This Mac. It's a shame it won't do it for all your drives, but it is very useful that macOS will breakdown the storage on your boot drive Preferably the whole thing, but at the utter least any file you choose to delete. No matter how urgent it is that you need this space, back up your drive.
Perhaps your Mac is complaining about how little free SSD space you've got, or perhaps you simply cannot do the work you need. And invariably, the reason you've even noticed that is because you need the space now.
You're looking into this because you've run out of storage space. Yet before you install or buy extra utilities, there are these decluttering features on your Mac. They're not perfect or all-powerful, there is still much that third-party apps can do. Right there in macOS there are tools to help you declutter your Mac. They're not so powerful and exciting that they'll ever get ten minutes in a WWDC presentation, but they are ones that every Mac user will benefit from. This time, though, Apple provides some powerful tools in macOS Catalina yet doesn't mention them. Built right into "About This Mac" are tools to help you manage storageįor all that it has always needed third-party developers, Apple has usually not been shy about trumping them with free equivalents to their apps and utilities.