Mac users often freak out when they look at the Storage settings in About This Mac and find that System storage takes up way more space than they think it should. However, if they wait a bit the storage meter will continue to calculate what takes up space and allocate it to iCloud Drive and other things. And instead of waiting for macOS to catch up with my disk space requirements, I can force the purging from the terminal. Determining if you have a large amount of 'System' disk usage. To see if this method will help you reclaim some disk space we need to check the macOS System Information. Click the from your desktop. Click About This Mac.
After the release of Sierra, optimizing storage has been easier with an inbuilt feature. Optimized Storage is a tool which helps you see what's taking up space on mac. It finds and removes unwanted large files from your Mac. However, it moves all this content in the cloud.
The files moved stays right where you saved them and gets downloaded when you want to access them. But is it really what you want? What if you don't want to move your content to iCloud? What if don't want to buy space on iCloud?
Then, it leaves you to either scour and delete unwanted large files manually or get a third-party application such as Smart Mac Care. Really me mac lipstick.
In this post, we have listed both the ways for you to find out what's taking up so much space on your Mac.
How To See What's Taking Space On Mac Manually?
To start, go to Apple menu, Click About This Mac->Storage. You will get to view the space used on Mac in different categories such as photos, videos, docs, apps and Other.
Once you have reviewed, click Manage to get recommendations to optimize your mac storage.
Note: Manage button is only available in Sierra and higher versions.
These recommendations will help you sort your storage space. You can turn on or use the features to manually retrieve space on Mac. However, you need to review all the things that you need to delete and sort the clutter on your own, which takes a lot of time and efforts. Also, this process is not error-free.
If you don't have a newer version of Mac, you need to follow these steps:
- Move big files to an external drive.
- Delete files from trash
- Compress large files
- Locate and delete unwanted files from your Mail, documents folder, downloads folder and more.
This can be exhausting. If you want to save your time and efforts, you should go for a third-party application such as Smart Mac Care to optimize your Mac. Let us know how it could help you to know what's taking up space on Mac.
Smart Mac Care
Smart Mac Care is a one-stop solution which can not only optimize your Mac but also secures it from malicious content, privacy traces, and unwanted junk files. You can see what's taking space on your Mac with the software's inbuilt feature Disk Usage. It lists bulkiest files, be it videos, photos, music, documents or other files on the computer, allowing you to sort the unwanted ones. This keeps your Mac optimized and secure with minimal efforts.
Well, this is not it! Smart Mac Care comes with advanced features on a simple interface, let's explore apart from helping to optimize disk space, what more it has to offer:
Protects Mac From Malicious Content:
With the prevalence of malware, adware, and other malicious content, your computer might suffer and could crash if not secured. That's where Smart Mac Care helps you. It scans and deletes threats present on your Mac.
Deletes Junk & Unwanted Files
Over time, your Mac might accumulate junk, log files along with other residual items. When these files grow in number, it takes a lot of space on your computer. Smart Mac Care can detect log files, cache files, trash and enables you to delete them. This recovers invaluable space on your Mac.
Removes Privacy Traces
Your browsing history can be hacked through history, cookies, and app cache. Smart Mac Care cleans and removes all the privacy traces to make sure your privacy stays intact.
Uninstaller
With its Uninstaller, Smart Mac Care gives you an option to easily uninstall applications along with files associated to it. Uninstall unwanted apps and free up space on your Mac.
Well, this is not it! Smart Mac Care comes with advanced features on a simple interface, let's explore apart from helping to optimize disk space, what more it has to offer:
Protects Mac From Malicious Content:
With the prevalence of malware, adware, and other malicious content, your computer might suffer and could crash if not secured. That's where Smart Mac Care helps you. It scans and deletes threats present on your Mac.
Deletes Junk & Unwanted Files
Over time, your Mac might accumulate junk, log files along with other residual items. When these files grow in number, it takes a lot of space on your computer. Smart Mac Care can detect log files, cache files, trash and enables you to delete them. This recovers invaluable space on your Mac.
Removes Privacy Traces
Your browsing history can be hacked through history, cookies, and app cache. Smart Mac Care cleans and removes all the privacy traces to make sure your privacy stays intact.
Uninstaller
With its Uninstaller, Smart Mac Care gives you an option to easily uninstall applications along with files associated to it. Uninstall unwanted apps and free up space on your Mac.
Duplicate Finder
If you are worried to sort your files and remove duplicates from it, Smart Mac Care can do that for you. No matter whether it is an image, folder, video or document, you can manage and organize them nicely and saves tons of GBS in the process.
Spots Failed Downloads
With Failed Downloads, you can get rid of any and every corrupt and incomplete download to retrieve your hard disk space.
Enable/Disable Login Items
Now you can control the apps that launch when your Mac starts up. With Login items, you can remove unwanted apps from login items list to improve boot time.
Optimizes Memory
With Memory Optimizer, Smart Mac Care shows memory available on Mac. Here you can see used memory within Apps, Wired or Compressed Memory. Click Optimize Now to organize.
Info On Redundant Data
System tab tells you about redundant data from iOS updates, iTunes, backups, downloads. You can get rid of them to free up space on Mac.
- Flash Cache
Flash Cache is a feature which shows you the list of flash videos, which could store cache data to get better browsing speed.
So, these are some of the features that make Smart Mac Care, a unique and complete solution that you can use to optimize and secure your Mac. It not only allows you to see what's taking up space on Mac but also enables you to orgnize the disk space smoothly.
What do you think? Which would be your choice when it comes to finding out what's taking up space on my Mac: A cumbersome task of sorting files manually or gently sifting through files using Smart Mac Care? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.
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Solid-state storage (SSD) is fantastically fast, but its high cost means that Macs with built-in SSD startup drives have a much lower capacity than their hard disk-based counterparts. This can be a problem if you have a large collection of photos or music files, or if you use your Mac to edit video. And so, if you have an SSD, you probably spend a lot of time checking the Storage tab in About this Mac. One thing you'll have noticed is that colored bar labeled ‘System'. What is it and how do you clear it? Read on and find out.
Why does the system take so much space on Mac?
Your system is mainly stored in both the System and Library folders. If your system is taking up too much disk space on Mac, explore those two folders and see what's stored in them.
If you're having a lot of your space allocated for 'system,' you may have Time Machine snapshots stored on your Mac. Later in this article, we're going to explain how to remove Time Machine backups.
How to reduce system storage on Mac
1. Check for unnecessary files in System storage
Much of the storage space used by the OS for system-related tasks is cleared when macOS deletes the files automatically, but sometimes that doesn't happen, which is why the System category can grow very large. Apple doesn't explain what comprises this category of storage, but it's likely that the following are part of it:
- Time Machine backups
- Old iOS backups
- File Vault files
- App cache files
- Unused disk images
Not knowing what files are included in System storage makes finding them tricky. However, it's far from impossible. My favorite tool for clearing unnecessary system junk from my Mac is CleanMyMac X. It has lots of tools for clearing out junk files, but for our purposes, there's one that really helps: System Junk. This handy utility scans your Mac and identifies things like temporary files, translation files in apps, broken preferences files, old updates, and system cache files that are no longer needed. You can then remove them with one click. Or you can choose which ones you want to get rid of and remove just those. If you want to give it a go, you can download a free version of CleanMyMac X here.
Once you've downloaded and installed it, do this:
- Launch CleanMyMac X.
- Choose System Junk in the sidebar.
- Press Scan.
- Once it's finished, if you're happy to remove the files CleanMyMac recommends, press Clean.
- If not, choose Review Details and go through the list of results.
- Uncheck the box next to any items you don't want to delete.
- Press Clean.
As you can see from the screenshot, the app offers to remove my Unused Disk Images (the remains of DMG installers), broken downloads, old app updates. If you use Photoshop or other media editor you'll see the option to delete Document Versions — intermediate edits of your files. In other words, you have many options for freeing up space at your disposal.
2. Manually remove Time Machine backups
Aside from using CleanMyMac X, one of the most straightforward ways to clear system storage on a Mac, is to get rid of Time Machine backups. Wait, what? You thought Time Machine backups were stored on an external or network drive? They are! But macOS also keeps a copy of your backup on your startup drive, in case the external drive isn't available when you need to restore files. That way you can restore data on a MacBook even when you're on the move.
macOS should delete Time Machine backups when your Mac runs low on storage, but it doesn't always work out that way. And besides, you might not want to wait until your Mac is short of space before you delete them. So, here's how to reduce system storage on a Mac by deleting Time Machine backups. Remember that will delete local copies of your backups, so if you think you might need them, don't do it.
- Go to Applications>Utilities and launch Terminal.
- When a Terminal window opens, type:
tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates - Press Return.
You will now see a list of stored Time Machine backups, listed by date.
- Type:
tmutil deletelocalsnapshots xxxxxxxwhere ‘xxxxxxx' is the name of one of the backups listed . This will take the form of a date followed by a text string. - Press Return.
- Repeat steps 1 and 2 for as many backups as you want to remove, checking the Storage tab in About this Mac each time to see how much space you've cleared.
3. Optimize your storage
If you've faced a cluttered storage situation, there's another way to fix it. Apple has anticipated such an issue and equipped the macOS with some features to optimize your space.
Go to the Apple menu and select About This Mac. Select the Storage tab and press Manage. In the window that appears, you can see some of the useful suggestions. 'Store in iCloud' lets you transfer all your data to cloud storage and reclaim some GBs on your Mac. The second option allows you to delete the heaviest files, like movies and programs.
Turning on 'Empty Bin Automatically' can be a useful option if you forget to do it regularly.
By pressing Review Files, you will jump into the Documents section. Review the files that are stored on your Mac and pay attention to the Unsupported Apps category. It can contain some programs that can no longer run on your macOS version.
Bonus tip: remove duplicate files
Aside from the bizarre system files, another thing that nibbles on your storage is duplicates. Remember that track you've accidentally added twice? Or a mail attachment you've opened several times? All these files just sit on your Mac and take up precious space.
Here's how you can quickly delete them in a few clicks.
- Download and open Gemini 2
- Choose a folder and click Scan for Duplicates
- Wait for the scan to finish
- Click Smart Cleanup to get rid of detected duplicates
Or click Review Results if you want to double-check what's being deleted.
What else can you do to reduce System storage on Mac?
Believe it or not, one thing you can do is wait. When you first choose the Storage tab in About this Mac, macOS seems to allocate quite a lot to System that it then reallocates elsewhere. For example, some users have reported that after waiting for a few minutes, much of the storage that was labeled System, is moved to the iCloud label. So if you wait, you might find that the System isn't taking up disk space in the huge quantities that it seemed to be at first.
The other thing you can do is investigate what files are designated as ‘System'. We've already talked about Time Machine backups, but everything stored in your Mac's System or Library folders comes under the ‘System' heading in About this Mac. That is:
/Library
/System
~/Library
~/System
Click on the Go menu in Finder and select Go to Folder, then paste in each of the paths above in turn. Go through the subfolders in each and press Cmd-I to Get Info and check how much data is in each. You'll quickly discover where your precious storage has gone.
Manage Space On Mac
It's likely that much of it is accounted for by cache files for apps like Photos and Safari. MacOS caches as much data as it can to avoid having to re-download it, which boosts performance. And it's smart enough to know that it must delete cache files when you run low on storage.
If you decide that you don't want to leave it up to the operating system to free up storage, don't just start trashing cache files or folders randomly, you might delete something you shouldn't. The best approach is to use CleanMyMac X's Smart Scan feature that will tell you what files can be safely deleted.
How To Clear Space On Your Mac
System storage can occupy tens of gigabytes of space on your Mac for Time Machine backups and cache files. It should be managed by macOS so you're never short of space. But if you want to do a system storage cleanup, or just free up more space on your Mac, give CleanMyMac X a go. You might be surprised by how much space you get back.
