The Apple macOS Blog

How to manage disk space on your Mac

Published: 26th of September, 2024

Authored by Maria
Maria Garner
Adventurer and Mac specialist

Low storage space is a sad reality most of us Mac users face, partly due to increased app bloat and our hard disks and SSDs not being upgradable. A Mac is a well engineered computer and may last many years but that 512GB SSD you configured it with 5 years ago may no longer be enough in 2024 where many popular Mac apps can weigh in at well over 200 megabytes each!

 

Clear those caches

You might be wondering 'what even are caches and why are they taking up so much of my disk space?', well caches on a Mac are temporary files and data that are stored on your computer by the operating system and applications. These files are intended to speed up certain processes by reducing the amount of time and resources needed to access frequently used data.

For example: web browsers like Safari, Chrome and Firefox store copies of images, scripts and other parts of websites you visit in their cache. So when you visit the same website again the browser can load these cached elements from your computer instead of downloading them again. This can make web pages appear to load faster and use less data.

Similarly some apps also store data in a cache to speed up their performance.

Over time cache files can and do take up a significant amount of storage space on your Mac. It's good practice to clear these caches and free up space when your Mac is running low. Caches will be re-created as needed and will ensure that your apps are running at optimal performance. Some people might say clearing caches reduces performance - in some cases this may well be true, but remember that app you tried 6 months ago, didn't like then deleted? Well it's quite likely that app's orphaned cache files are still on your Mac taking up valuable disk space! Modern SSDs like the one probably in your Mac combined with really fast WiFi mean that any possible (temporary) slowdown you might see from clearing the cache is negligable at the most. Click to read my earlier full article on macOS caches on how to clear them using built-in tools, the commandline, or a free 3rd party cleaner.

 

So, what's taking up all that space?!

If you've removed the apps you no longer need or use, cleared your caches, yet are still low on space you can use the beautifully animated and free macOS disk explorer called Disk Usage included in iBoostUp to scan for and find large files and folders.

Here is a video of it in action:

Open iBoostUp and navigate to Disk Usage to access this free feature.

You can download iBoostUp for free from iboostup.com or the Mac App Store.

 

Other likely culprits

Other places you'll likely find huge files and other space hogs are inside your Downloads folder. You can also search for redundant copies of the same file by using iBoostUp's Duplicate File Finder function or completely uninstall unwanted apps, including their related caches, using the Uninstaller function (also available inside iBoostUp).

I really hope this little article helped you track down what was taking up all that space on your Mac!

Till next time,
 ❤️ Maria

 

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