Step One: Don’t Be Surprised By This OS X Warning GrandPerspective offers a highly visual display of what’s taking up space on your Mac Onyx cleans up the Mac files you’d be afraid to touch yourself… Below, I’ll show you how two completely free Mac programs, GrandPerspective and OnyX, will do all the heavy lifting for you. Next, cleanse the cruft OS X builds up in the background as you use your computer. First, find and delete enough files to leave your Mac at least 50GB of free storage capacity - enough room for the Mac to work without pausing to manage its hard drive space. This How-To article offers a simpler alternative. That’s not as hard as it sounds, but it’s a radical and fairly time-consuming solution.
Even die-hard Apple fans will admit that Macs typically run new OS X versions better (faster, and with fewer bugs) if you start with a clean slate: completely wipe your hard drive, do a fresh install of the latest OS X release, and restore only the files you need.
I’ve devoted several columns to hardware solutions - replacing old hard drives with fast new SSDs, adding more RAM, and increasing storage capacity using an external drive - but there are software solutions, too. It can do things like dig into the mysterious “Other” category and help you clear out what you don’t need.“My Mac used to be fast, but now it’s running so slow.” I’ve heard many versions of this complaint, and they’re always factually true, not just opinions: Macs do become sluggish over time, even if all of their chips and hard drives are working like new. It’s a simple and clear way to see everything on your Mac, or any other attached storage device or drive. Power users that really want to clean out their Mac’s storage may want to check out a third party app like DaisyDisk ($9.99).
These two commands will make quick work of a messy Mac desktop. This can really tidy up your desktop! IDG Just click on that icon to open the stack. Consider the Use Stacks feature to automatically stack-up files of the same type into a single icon. Right-click (two-finger tap on a trackpad) any open space and choose Clean Up to get things arranged neatly, or Clean Up By to sort them as well. If your desktop is littered with icons, you should probably tidy things up a bit. But you may have old large files and documents, or apps that no longer even work on your version of macOS, that you can safely remove. Big library files (for apps like Lightroom or Final Cut Pro) are likely to show up here, and you might not want to mess with them. There are several sections here, like Large Files and Unsupported Apps, that are worth perusing. Then, click on Documents in the left tab. You can see all your installed applications here and sort them by size, easily deleting apps you haven’t used in ages. While you’re in the Storage Management app, click on the Applications tab in the left column. Take a look at your Applications and Documents
The Optimize Storage solution will get rid of things like old TV shows you’ve already watched and old email attachments when you’re low on storage space. In the Recommendations tab you’ll see a number of useful options, like Store in iCloud and Empty Trash Automatically.
The built-in Storage Management app is the best place to start when cleaning up your Mac. Open the Storage Management app, either by using Spotlight (Command-space) or by clicking the Apple logo in the upper left of the menu bar, choosing About This Mac, clicking the Storage tab, then Manage.
Here are a few tips to make quick work of your Mac “spring cleaning.” Optimize Storage Now is as good a time as any to tidy up your Mac, freeing up storage space and probably CPU cycles and RAM in the process. With so many people working from home lately, the problem has only gotten worse.
Old applications you no longer use, data you have no use for, a desktop full of icons (only four of which you actually ever use)…you know what I mean. Over time, your Mac probably accumulates a lot of cruft.