If you’re running low on storage on your Mac, the obvious way to fix it is to delete a load of files. But if you need those files, you need another solution. Here are some tips for freeing up space in macOS. Uninstall apps you don’t use The simplest way to recover space on your Mac is to delete the apps that you no longer need or use. We’ve all got some. But don’t just drag them into the Trash, which is the standard way to remove apps in macOS. Instead, use a third-party app to do the job more thoroughly. I use AppCleaner to uninstall apps on a day-to-day basis. But another app, Pearcleaner, is actually better in this case. Install and open Pearcleaner. In the Search box, click the hamburger menu button (the three horizontal lines) and change Sorting to “Last Used Date.” Scroll to the bottom to see the apps you use the least. If you no longer need the app, select it and hit “Delete” at the bottom of the right-hand pane. To uninstall Pearcleaner itself, open the app and go to Pearcleaner > Uninstall Pearcleaner. Delete orphaned files Pearcleaner can also locate files left behind by apps you already uninstalled. Some can be surprisingly large. Go to View > Navigate To > Orphaned Files to see a list of all these leftover files and folders. There will be a lot of them, but many will be tiny and aren’t worth removing. Click the “Name” button at the top and select “Size” to order them with the biggest first. Select the files and hit “Delete.” Remove unused architectures from apps Many apps include code for Apple Silicon and older Intel Macs. If you’re on Apple Silicon, you don’t need the Intel portion, and it’s simply wasting space. Pearcleaner can remove it, and it can free up many megabytes or even gigabytes of space. Go to View > Navigate To > App Lipo. You’ll see a list of all your apps that have architectures you don’t need, along with an estimated saving if you remove them. Pick one and select “Start Lipo.” The process isn’t risk-free, and the estimates are not always accurate, so take one app at a time and check that they still work when you’re done. Delete old device backups If you routinely sync your iPhone or iPad with your Mac, you’ve probably got months of backups saved, each one eating up a large amount of space. You can delete all but the last one or two. To see your backups, connect your iPhone or iPad. Click on the device in Finder and select “Manage Backups.” Alternatively, you can do it manually. In Finder, select Go > Go To Folder and enter the following path: ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/ This will take you to the folder where your backups are stored, and you can delete those you no longer need. Clear up app caches Something else that eats up storage behind the scenes is your app caches. Apps temporarily store data as they work in order to be able to access it more quickly next time. This can build up over time and become quite large. Media apps can be particularly to blame. When I enabled lossless audio in Spotify, my Spotify cache quickly grew to around 30GB. Sometimes it’s possible to delete an app’s cache within its settings, and sometimes you need to do it manually. For the most part, it’s only a temporary fix, as the app will start rebuilding its cache the next time you use it. To locate the caches manually in Finder, go to Go, and then hold down the Option key and select “Library.” Find the Cache folder and sort it by size to see the largest ones. You can then check the app to see if there’s a “Clear Cache” setting, or just delete the folder from here. Offload large files to the cloud Probably the best way to free up a large amount of space instantly is to offload your largest files to the cloud. All the main cloud services have apps that let you access files normally without needing to save them locally. There’s a slight performance trade-off as a result, because you have to download the files before you can open them. But if you’ve got large files that you don’t need regularly, then putting them in the cloud can save a lot of space. To enable iCloud, go to System Settings > iCloud > Drive. Enable “Optimize Mac Storage” to let macOS manage whether files are stored locally. You can do similar things with Google Drive, Dropbox, and all other big cloud storage services. Remove duplicate photos A smaller but still useful way to reclaim space is to check your drive for duplicate files. You shouldn’t have too many, but it can happen in Apple Photos. Open Photos and locate the “Utilities” section in the sidebar. If you have any duplicate images in your library, you’ll see a Duplicates section here. Select it and delete one of each of the copies. Reduce the size of the “System Data” Finally, go to System Settings > General > Storage to see a graphic showing how your drive space is being used. The largest section might be “System Data,” and it might be huge. System Data is pretty opaque. It contains the backups and caches that we’ve already looked at, plus Time Machine snapshots, other temporary files, and anything else that can’t be easily categorized. For the most part, macOS will take care of it, and the size will get bigger and smaller naturally. But if you want to force it, a simple restart will often help, and our guide to the macOS System Files label has some more tips you can try. Once you’ve worked through the steps, remember to empty the Trash to complete the job. You should now have recovered several gigabytes of space without losing access to the files you need.
https://www.howtogeek.com/how-to-free-up-disk-space-on-your-mac-without-deleting-your-files/
