- About this Mac includes a storage feature to see a snapshot of your storage usage, but it also offers up recommendations to free up space and more. Head to → About this Mac.
- 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.
Mac cleaning apps can deal with all these issues, and find the hidden things that are sucking up your storage space automatically. What’s more, they do tend to free up a larger amount of space. You can view a summary of your storage pattern on your Mac by clicking on About This Mac from the Apple menu. An overview of your used and free space will be displayed in the storage section. Click on the Manage button in the top right corner to view options to free up storage space with macOS Sierra.
In today’s era of multi-terabyte hard drives and online storage, many of us don’t keep as close an eye on our disk usage as we used to. Still, even the largest drives fill up eventually. If you don’t know how to check your disk space use on your Mac, here’s where to look.
Options 1 and 2: From the Finder
The Finder gives you a couple ways to see how much free disk space you have. These are the easiest ways.
Preview your storage device. In macOS, if you select and item in the Finder and press the spacebar on your keyboard, you get a preview of the item. For example, if you select a text document and then press the spacebar, you can see what’s in the document without actually opening it.
You can use preview to check your storage device’s capacity. Here’s how.
1. Select the storage device on the Desktop. (To make your storage device appear on your Desktop, go to the Finder and select Finder > Preferences, click on General, and modify the setting for Show these items on the Desktop.) Or open a Finder window, look in the left column, under the Devices heading, and select the storage device.
2. Press the spacebar. You should see a window open that shows the capacity of your storage device and the available space.
3. To close the window, press spacebar again, or press Command-W, or click on the close-window icon (the circle X) in the upper left.
Finder window status bar. If you would like to have an overview of your free disk space at all times from the Finder, you can turn on the Finder’s status bar.
1. Open a Finder window if you don’t have one open already (click the Finder’s Dock icon or go to File > New Finder Window).
2. Open the View menu and select Show status bar. This will show you how many items are in the current folder, and if you’re viewing a folder on your hard drive (such as your Applications or Documents folder), you’ll also get a readout of your hard drive’s free space.
How To Free Storage On Mac
Options 3: Get Info
1. Find your hard drive in the Finder and select it. If it appears in the Finder window sidebar or on the Desktop (it doesn’t by default—go to Finder > Preferences to change that), click your hard drive’s icon in either of those spots. If your hard drive icon doesn’t appear there, go to Go > Computer, then click the hard drive icon under Devices.
2. Click the File menu, and select Get Info, or press Comand-I on your keyboard.
The Info window shows the capacity, available space, and used space, as well as other information.
Option 4: About This Mac
In recent versions of macOS (Yosemite or later), you can easily check your disk usage from the About box.
Mac cleaning apps can deal with all these issues, and find the hidden things that are sucking up your storage space automatically. What’s more, they do tend to free up a larger amount of space. You can view a summary of your storage pattern on your Mac by clicking on About This Mac from the Apple menu. An overview of your used and free space will be displayed in the storage section. Click on the Manage button in the top right corner to view options to free up storage space with macOS Sierra.
In today’s era of multi-terabyte hard drives and online storage, many of us don’t keep as close an eye on our disk usage as we used to. Still, even the largest drives fill up eventually. If you don’t know how to check your disk space use on your Mac, here’s where to look.
Options 1 and 2: From the Finder
The Finder gives you a couple ways to see how much free disk space you have. These are the easiest ways.
Preview your storage device. In macOS, if you select and item in the Finder and press the spacebar on your keyboard, you get a preview of the item. For example, if you select a text document and then press the spacebar, you can see what’s in the document without actually opening it.
You can use preview to check your storage device’s capacity. Here’s how.
1. Select the storage device on the Desktop. (To make your storage device appear on your Desktop, go to the Finder and select Finder > Preferences, click on General, and modify the setting for Show these items on the Desktop.) Or open a Finder window, look in the left column, under the Devices heading, and select the storage device.
2. Press the spacebar. You should see a window open that shows the capacity of your storage device and the available space.
3. To close the window, press spacebar again, or press Command-W, or click on the close-window icon (the circle X) in the upper left.
Finder window status bar. If you would like to have an overview of your free disk space at all times from the Finder, you can turn on the Finder’s status bar.
1. Open a Finder window if you don’t have one open already (click the Finder’s Dock icon or go to File > New Finder Window).
2. Open the View menu and select Show status bar. This will show you how many items are in the current folder, and if you’re viewing a folder on your hard drive (such as your Applications or Documents folder), you’ll also get a readout of your hard drive’s free space.
How To Free Storage On Mac
Options 3: Get Info
1. Find your hard drive in the Finder and select it. If it appears in the Finder window sidebar or on the Desktop (it doesn’t by default—go to Finder > Preferences to change that), click your hard drive’s icon in either of those spots. If your hard drive icon doesn’t appear there, go to Go > Computer, then click the hard drive icon under Devices.
2. Click the File menu, and select Get Info, or press Comand-I on your keyboard.
The Info window shows the capacity, available space, and used space, as well as other information.
Option 4: About This Mac
In recent versions of macOS (Yosemite or later), you can easily check your disk usage from the About box.
1. Open the Apple menu, then select About This Mac.
2. Click the Storage tab in the toolbar to see how much disk space you have available. (On OS X Mountain Lion or Mavericks, click the More info button, then click Storage.)
You also get a simplified overview of what sort of files are eating up your storage space.
Option 5: From Disk Utility
You can also view your free disk space from your Mac’s Disk Utility app. Open Spotlight by clicking the magnifying glass in the upper-right corner of the screen, then type Disk Utility in the search box that appears. Once Disk Utility comes up in the list and is highlighted, press the Enter key. Disk Utility is also found in Applications > Utilities.
Once Disk Utility opens, select your hard drive’s name from the list. You can see your drive’s capacity, its available space, its used space, and other info. You can also check the free space for any drive you have connected to your Mac from this window, be it a USB flash drive or external hard drive.
Sep 08, 2021 • Filed to: Solve Mac Problems • Proven solutions
Content is stored on the cloud and is always there within the reach of the user whenever it is needed through the improved efficiency of storing, processing, andretrieving files on the macOS Sierra. The new system will automatically store up those files that you do not use often in the cloud to free up storage space with macOS Sierra. Optimized versions of your pictures and other frequently used files will stay on your Mac while all other files are saved and can be retrieved by downloading them from the cloud. See how you can do this below.
You can view a summary of your storage pattern on your Mac by clicking on About This Mac from the Apple menu. An overview of your used and free space will be displayed in the storage section.
Click on the Manage button in the top right corner to view options to free up storage space with macOS Sierra. If you already have some options enabled, you will see fewer options available in this window.
1. Store in iCloud
After selecting the Store in iCloud option, you will have the option to choose between 'Files from Desktop and Documents in iCloud Drive' and 'Photos and Videos in iCloud Photo Library'.
- The first option will store all files that are not used often on iCloud drive whenever space is needed on your system. All files that will be stored in the cloud will have the cloud icon next to it which can be clicked to download the files at any time.
- For the second option, all full versions of your pictures will be stored in the iCloud photo library with the optimized versions on your system. You can download the originals from the iCloud photo library at any time. The storage space available on your iCloud is according to the plan you are on. You can manage this option to increase or reduce the available space.
2. Optimize storage
Here you can choose from the options below after clicking on it;
- Download only recent attachments - only recently received attachments will be downloaded automatically. Other attachments can be downloaded manually by opening and saving them to the system.
- Don’t automatically download any email attachments - email attachments will only be downloaded when you open that email or the email attachment and save it on the system.
- Automatically remove watched iTunes movies and TV shows - all iTunes movies and TV shows that you have watched will be removed from your Mac to cloud storage whenever more space is needed. These items can be downloaded again at any time by clicking on the cloud logo next to them.
3. Empty trash automatically
Selecting this option will mean that you have set your Mac to automatically delete all files that are sent to trash and have stayed there for 30 days. Any files in the trash after 30 days will be automatically deleted to free up storage space with macOS Sierra.
4. Reduce clutter
This option will help you point out all the large files that you might not be needing any longer. When you click on Review Files, you can select from the options in the sidebar to search your compartments like Documents and Applications. You can delete some files directly from these categories with your pointer hovering over them. Select the X key to delete them from your Mac for good. If you purchased them from iTunes, Apple Store, or iBooks Store, you can download them again later. For categories with compartments, you can see the total size of the file from the side. You can open up the file to see the different compartments and their sizes and choose what to delete from there. These will also be permanently deleted.
Other ways in which macOS Sierra saves space automatically
- You will get reminders to delete application installers that you have already used and will not be needed again on your Mac
- Your cache, logs and other data deemed as unnecessary will be cleared automatically to free up storage space with macOS Sierra
- Any duplicate downloads from safari will be detected by the system. Only the more recent version of the download form the duplicate options will be saved on your Mac.
- All fonts, languages ad dictionaries that are not being used by your Mac will be deleted
5. Where to find settings for each feature
- Store in iCloud: choose Apple menu > System Preferences > iCloud > Options. Desktop & Documents Folders and Optimize Mac Storage settings will be selected automatically. Deselect iCloud Drive to turn off iCloud Drive entirely. In photos, you can choose Photos > Preference > iCloud. This selects the iCloud Photo Library and Optimize Mac Storage.
- Optimize Mac Storage: in iTunes choose iTunes > Preferences > Advanced. Optimize Storage will select 'Automatically delete watched movies and TV shows'. In mail choose Mail > Preferences > Accounts. Optimize Storage sets the Download Attachments to Recent or None.
- Empty Trash Automatically: from the finder, choose Finder > Preferences > Advanced. This will choose 'Remove items from the Trash after 30 days'.
6. Learn more
In the About Mac pop-up menu, purgeable content will show in the Storage section if Optimize Mac storage is turned on. Files considered purgeable are those Mac can remove to make space but they can all be downloaded again.
During the process of freeing up space on your Mac, you might delete or lose a file by accident and want it back in the future. You can do this withMac Hard Drive data recoverysoftware.Recoverit for Macis a good option for this. You can recover data from Mac hard drive that has been lost, deleted, or formatted.
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