How to Free Up Space on a Mac’s Hard Drive? 6 Suggestions

If you use a MacBook, you might be familiar with the tiny storage drives that make large volume data storage a challenge. Luckily, you can make enough space on the hard drive or solid-state drive by following some helpful tips. 

Deleting a couple of old files or updated apps will only help you get some megabytes of space; you need to dig deeper to remove the temporary files, erase language files, clear system cache, clean email attachments, and finally empty the trash can. 

So, let’s look at some quick and easy ways to clean hard drives and claim storage on a MacBook. 

Stream Live Videos 

If you are downloading stuff from the internet to watch it later, the media file stored on the device consumes storage. Sometimes you are not able to watch the content because your computer is slow, maybe due to multiple media files that you have downloaded to watch your favorite movie or shows. 

To save space, you can use streaming sites that will prevent you from keeping the video files on the storage drive. Now when you stream videos online, they are available as MKV or MP4. If you choose to watch mkv on mac, you may either need to convert it first or use a third-party video player. 

Remove Apps & Their Leftovers

Apps become outdated over time and turn out to be real storage hogs if not deleted. The redundant apps, without doing any good to the system, consume a fair share of storage space, and this affects the system performance in the long run. Deleting such apps is the most practical way to clean up a hard drive and get storage volume. 

Apple offers various ways to get rid of redundant apps, and you may select to delete them from the Launchpad, Finder window, or via Spotlight. Whatever method you choose, make sure to empty the trash can to remove the app permanently. Using third-party app removal programs will help you to terminate any leftover items right away. 

Clean the Downloads Folder

Since most of us have been working from home for quite a couple of years now. We are sharing important documents with our colleagues almost every day, which results in collecting bulk files and ZIP folders in the Downloads folders on the computer. Everything you download from the web stores directly within the Downloads folder by default. 

Open the Downloads folder and check what files are present in it and if they are required for future projects and references. You need to check every single file manually, and if it’s not required, you may delete it to make storage. Even if you realize that you need some of these files later, you can view them over email. 

Delete Duplicate & Temporary Files

Do you even realize how much space you can claim by erasing duplicate files from your computer? Day in and day out, a lot of files start occupying the space on the hard drive. We have become used to storing multiple versions of a single file with little changes. These files often make it difficult to figure out the latest one. 

Having too many duplicate files is bewildering as you might end up thinking which file you have updated a few days back, so deleting them has a couple of benefits. They are not just harmful to the disk but decrease your productivity and make it difficult to sort them on the device in an organized manner. 

Delete Data & Apps Permanently

Normally, you need to delete files manually from the Trash folder, which is time-consuming and annoying as well. When we delete data from any location, the deleted items go to the Trash and stay there for the next 30 days until you navigate to Trash and remove all the items manually. 

When you are deleting files with the intent to make space on the hard drive, removing the apps or files doesn’t help until you remove them permanently. You can only claim storage space after you empty the Trash manually. However, you can automate this task and can even set your computer to bypass the Trash folder to delete data permanently. 

Clear Browser & User Cache 

If you are a regular internet user, you might be browsing so many websites, which is leaving behind a huge browser cache. The browser cache on macOS or Windows is the temporary file that helps load previously visited websites quite faster and saves you considerable time. But they also slow down your computer greatly when not deleted regularly. 

Excessive cache files will reduce the storage space, which slows down the computer gradually. By clearing browser cache, you can make several hundred megabytes of available space on MacBook and other computers. It won’t take more than a few minutes but makes extra space on the hard drive while improving the overall browsing experience.