If so, then read our article to discover how to clean your Mac in the most effective and quickest ways possible.
Everyone keeps their houses clean, but surprisingly, many Mac users neglect to clean their Mac startup disks. The result? An annoying "Your disk is almost full" message and possible poor performance.
If you’re wondering the best ways to solve this issue, then don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. Our guide will show you how to check if your startup disk is full and how to free up essential space on your Mac.
If your Mac screen pops up with a “Your disk is almost full” message, it is almost certainly referring to your Mac’s startup disk.
The startup disk is the hard drive or SSD that holds your Mac’s operating system. For most people, this is the built-in drive on their Mac. And unless you set up an external drive, it’s probably also the place where all your other local files are stored too.
This means your documents, movies, music, downloads, and other files are all probably saved to your startup disk, alongside macOS and every other app installed on your computer.
When you look at it this way, it’s easy to see how your Mac’s startup drive can become full as you install more apps, upload more photos, and create more documents over time.
Unfortunately, most modern Macs don’t let you upgrade the startup drive to give yourself more storage. So if your Mac’s startup disk is full, the only way to fix it is to remove various files to create more free space.
Even if your Mac hasn’t warned you that your startup disk is almost full, you should regularly check how much free space you’ve got left so you can fix any problems as they develop.
Here’s the easiest way to check the free space on your Mac:
At the top of this screen you’ll see the name of your Mac’s startup drive—usually Macintosh HD—followed by a breakdown of the total storage space and how it’s currently being used.
Hover your cursor over the chart to find out how much space each category is using, then hover over the white section on the right to see how much free storage space is still available.
Ideally, you want to keep about 20GB of storage space available.
You should now have a clear idea of how much space is left on your startup disk and what kinds of files are using up your storage. It’s time to clear out some of that much-needed space.
We’ve listed all the best methods you can use to free up your startup disk; we also rated their difficulty, so you can choose which ones you are able to complete yourself.
The methods we offer below are great and effective. However, you should understand that to keep your Mac clean all the time, you’ll need to repeat everything at least once every few weeks.
As an alternative, you may get MacKeeper to scan your startup disk in seconds and help remove any junk clogging your Mac in just a couple of clicks.
Both the Trash and the Downloads folder on your Mac regularly fill up with useless files over time. The Downloads folder keeps everything you’ve ever downloaded. And unless you empty it, the Trash keeps everything you’ve ever deleted.
Don’t be surprised if these two folders waste gigabytes of space on your startup disk. The solution, of course, is to delete downloads you don't need.
Here’s what you need to do:
You should find that this creates much more free space on your startup disk.
This may seem like silly advice at first glance; but eventually you’ll find yourself staring at dozens of different photos and screenshots you no longer need.
This will add some megabytes to your storage, but what’s more important—your Mac won’t need to load all those icons every time it starts, so it will be able to devote its powers to more vital processes.
This task is actually the easiest and the hardest at the same time. Technically, there is nothing difficult here—just click and delete; but if we approach this task from the other side, this means you have to confess you don’t need some large files on your Mac anymore and delete them for good. Like, forever.
Here’s what you should do:
If the About This Mac window says a lot of space on your Mac is used up by System, Other, or Backup files, you might be able to get rid of them by simply backing up your Mac.
This is often the case if you normally use Time Machine to back up your Mac, but haven’t done so in a while. When this happens, your Mac saves numerous Time Machine snapshots to your startup disk, which it then transfers to your external drive the next time you complete a backup.
All you need to do is to connect your external Time Machine drive and go to System Preferences > Time Machine > Back Up Now.
You may also find that a lot of storage is being used by local iOS or iPadOS backups. If you don’t need these backups anymore—which might be the case if you now back up to iCloud—you can delete them using the About This Mac window.
Here’s how:
Most of the storage on your Mac’s startup disk is likely being taken up by your own personal files. This includes stuff like music, movies, photos, and documents.
Of course, you can’t delete most of these files, but you can free up space by moving them off your Mac.
There are two ways to do this:
To export files, connect your external drive, then drag the relevant files onto that drive using Finder. Once Finder finishes copying your files to the external drive, you can safely delete them from your Mac.
The best method to upload your files varies depending on the cloud storage service you choose, but iCloud is the most common one.
To upload your files to iCloud Drive:
This will automatically upload all the files from your Desktop and Documents folders to iCloud Drive, freeing up lots of space on your Mac’s startup disk.
You may also want to enable Photos in the iCloud settings to upload your photos as well. To do that, just use one of the two methods below.
The first way:
The second way:
Please note that if you decide to go for a professional cleaning solution like MacKeeper, this doesn’t mean the app may delete something valuable to you—instead you can always look through the scan results and decide what you want to keep.
And to make the process even more efficient, MacKeeper offers the Autoscan tool. The app will automatically run a Safe Cleanup scan every 24 hours. If there’s anything worth your attention, the app will notify you so you can check the results.
A lot of apps provide different language options for their users. Though you’ll probably need only one or two of them, other languages are still present and waste space on your device.
So this is what you need to do to get your storage back:
Open Finder and select Applications from the sidebar to view all the apps installed on your Mac. Take a look through the list to see if there are any apps you don’t use anymore, which you can then uninstall to create more free space.
The quickest way to uninstall an app on your Mac is to simply drag it to the Trash, but this can often leave lots of hidden files in the System and Library folders that still take up space. Alternatively, you can use MacKeeper's Smart Uninstaller to uninstall an app and get rid of all the files that come with it in one go.
If your Mac startup disk is still full after following all the steps above, then there are probably lots of hidden system files using up your storage. These files cover everything from essential parts of the operating system to superfluous caches from useless websites.
Of course, you want to keep hold of all the essential files while finding and deleting everything else, which is no small task.
You should know that doing so manually can be incredibly time consuming. And if you get it wrong, you could even cause problems with macOS.
For simplicity, it’s usually quicker and easier to use software like MacKeeper’s Safe Cleanup feature, which automatically finds and removes any system files you can safely delete.
But if you’re determined to delete these system files yourself, here are some good places to look:
The decision on how to free up space on your device is always up to you—now you’ve read all the information and are ready to make your move. Just make sure that if you want to clean your startup disk manually, you should precisely follow all the steps and be very attentive.
And if you’ve decided to clear up your Mac with a professional app like MacKeeper, you’ll save lots of time and the probability of making a mistake will be zero. By the way, you can take advantage of the free MacKeeper version to feel all the benefits yourself. Happy cleaning!
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