Clean Mac System Storage

29-04-2021 admin

When storage space is limited, only the files that you have recently accessed are kept on your Mac. This way, you can work easily while offline. This option allows you to store full-resolution media in the iCloud Photos location. If you have limited storage space, only the optimized versions of photos and videos are made accessible to.
Unfortunately, those files take a lot of space on your Mac, and instead of speeding things up, they slow your computer down. Therefore, if you want to give your system a boost, clean your Mac from the cache files. There are two ways to do that: you can delete them manually or use a MacBook cleaner like CleanMyMac X to do the job for you.
It’s recommended that you keep at least 15-20% of your Mac’s memory free to keep it running smoothly. Optimizing storage is an efficient way to do this. But there are also several other steps you can take to free up space on MacBook Air, Pro, or any other macOS device.

Summary: Still worry about your insufficient Mac storage? Want to speed up Mac but don't know how? Get the 6 free Mac cleaners to clear disk space, clean junk or duplicate files to free up your Mac.

It’s unlikely that optimizing the storage will clean up your System files, but it could still help create more space on your Mac. To enable Optimized Storage in macOS: Open the Apple menu and go to About This Mac Storage Manage Storage; From the Recommendations tab, enable the Optimize Storage option; 5.

Many of us know exactly how to clean Windows computer or Android phone, but when it comes to cleaning Mac, few people know about it. Many Apple users think that, there is no need to clean Mac.

Delete System Storage Mac

However, with more and more junk files occupying your Mac storage, your Mac will slow down and offer a bad performance. You have to rely on some Mac cleaner software to remove all useless data.

Best Free Mac Cleaners

With so many Mac cleaner tools offered on the market, which one you should use? Do you know how to choose a great Mac cleaner? We have tested more than 20 Mac cleaners and select the 6 best ones for you to choose from. You can pick your preferred Free Mac cleaner to speed up your Mac easily and quickly.

No.1 Free Mac cleaner: CCleaner - Free junk file cleaner

CCleaner is one free and top Mac cleaner to delete cookies, search history, temporary files and junk files from Mac. The specific functions are below:

1. Find and remove useless/junk files with the click of a button so your Mac can run faster. Speed up boot times with easy management of Startup items.

2. Clear up your recycle bin, temporary files and folders, broken permissions and others. If you want to remove installed programs, just click one button.

3. Erase your browser search history and cookies so you can browse any Internet confidentially and your identity remains anonymous.

No.2 Free Mac cleaner: Disk Inventory X – Free disk cleaner for Mac

Disk Inventory X is one disk cleaning software and disk usage utility for Mac. With this free Mac cleaner, you can know where your disk space has gone and clean it safely. Just see more about Disk Inventory X.

1. Disk Inventory X shows the sizes of files and folders in a special graphical way.

2. With this Mac cleaner, you can see different files marked with different colors, to help you easily find what you want to delete.

No.3 Free Mac cleaner: AVG Cleaner – Free hidden clutter cleaner

AVG Cleaner is one free Mac cleaner to clean hidden clutter and forgotten duplicates. You can see the detailed information below:

1. Clear more hidden garbage, log, download history and trash bin for freeing up more space on your Mac.

2. Search more duplicate files, including images, music, videos and folders.

3. Created for Mac and easy to use.

4. There is an anti-virus software called AVG AntiVirus for Mac, you can use it to protect Macs on your and your families.

No.4 Free Mac cleaner: OmniDiskSweeper - Free hard drive cleaner

OmniDiskSweeper is one free Mac cleaner to find and delete big files that taking up hard drive space and also it can help you recover lost disk space.

1. OmniDiskSweeper helps you sort every file on your Mac by size and you can identify the biggest file to delete it.

2. After deleting, remaining space and folders are recalculated.

No.5 Free Mac cleaner: Dr. Cleaner – Free memory, disk, system cleaner

Dr. Cleaner is one free Mac cleaning app to offer Memory Optimization, Disk Cleaning and System Monitoring to keep your Mac optimized for the best performance.

1. Smart and accurate selection for duplicates scan and remove on Mac with OS X 10.6.6 or later.

2. Scanned big files and junk files will be deleted easily from your Mac.

3. You can easily view real-time network usage and CPU usage in the Menu bar.

No.6 Free Mac cleaner: Disk Drill

Disk Drill is one very popular free Mac cleaner app. Actually, it is a professional data recovery tool for Mac, which carries some disk cleaning functions. It has the capability to analyze Mac storage space, locate unused, large, and duplicate files and so on. In this way, it enables you to free up your Mac storage effortlessly.

1. Monitor the health of your Mac storage and offer timely alerts.

2. Find and remove duplicate files in multiple locations on Mac.

3. Analyze disk space, locate unused files and space hogs, free up storage.

Professional Mac cleaner recommendation:

With the best 6 Mac cleaner apps above, you can handily remove some junk files and optimize your Mac performance. But some of them only offer trial features. Here you are recommended to directly choose the professional Mac cleaner below:

Mac Cleaner

Scan and delete junk files including cache data and logs, email attachments, unwanted iTunes backup and app localization.
Delete large and old documents and selectively remove worthless files.
Clean duplicated files or folders on Mac.
Uninstall apps and clean associated files safely.
Monitor Mac system in disk utilization, battery status, memory performance and CPU usage.
Compatible with iMac, Mac Pro, MacBook (Air/Pro) in the latest macOS Big Sur.

FAQs of Free Mac Cleaner

How do I clean and optimize my Mac?

Download and install Aiseesoft Mac Cleaner. Click Cleaner and you can clean up your Mac by cleaning system junk, iPhoto junk, email junk, similar photos, iTunes junk, trash bin, large & old files and more.

Why is my Mac so slow?

The reason that why is your Mac so slow may includes there is no enough hard drive or RAM on Mac. Or there is too many startup items or icon clutter on desktop. Perhaps your macOS is outdated and you should update it.

Does Catalina slow down your Mac?

No. Catalina won’t slow down an old Mac. You can check to make sure if your Mac is compatible with macOS Catalina.

By now, 6 free Mac cleaners have been shared here. You can choose your preferred Mac cleaner according to your need. Please share it in comment if you have any better Mac cleaner recommendation. Check ere if you want to speed up your slow iPhone.

What do you think of this post?

Mac System Storage High

Excellent

Rating: 4.8 / 5 (based on 238 ratings)

December 29, 2020 17:50 / Updated by Louisa White to Mac Cleanup

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.

What is System storage on Mac?

System storage, obviously, contains the macOS itself but what else is there? Part of this storage includes applications, drivers, volume data, and Library. While the nominal size of the macOS is around 12 GB (for macOS Big Sur), the Library is the real space-hogger. It contains piles of old cache files and supporting data.

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.

That will help you to get rid of system storage on Mac.

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 xxxxxxx where ‘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.

Clean Up Storage On Mac

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

Now you can Click Smart Cleanup to get rid of detected duplicates and delete system storage on Mac. 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.

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. So be careful

Clean Up Macbook System Storage

Another way to go about it, is to use a storage analyzer. There are nice apps that search for hidden space on Mac and reveal your largest folders. You can use a free version of CleanMyMac X and inside it, it has a feature called 'Space Lens.'