Detox Your Mac And iOS Devices

Mac running slow or short on space? This feature will show you how to clear out the rubbish and keep hold of the important stuff

- Adam Banks

One thing that's as sure as death and taxes is the fact that your Mac’s hard disk will eventually fill up. These days it may be an SSD or Fusion Drive, but regardless of the nature of the hardware it can only hold a finite number of gigabytes. And the more files you add — whether new apps, downloads, music and videos, your photo collection, work files or anything else — the less space will be left. And the same goes for your iPhone or iPad.

As we so often say about macOS and iOS, remember that there’s only a problem when there’s a problem.

There’s generally no need to worry about unwanted files existing, or to install software that promises to remove them. These files won’t break anything or slow anything down. But when you try to save or download a file and get a warning that your drive is almost full then yep, you’ll need to do something about it.

In this article, we look at all the kinds of content that are likely to be taking up storage unnecessarily, where to find them, and how to get rid of them safely. Finally, in case it feels like time for more drastic action, you’ll see how to wipe your drive and start again.

Step one: Identify space hogs and optimize storage

The bigger the file, the more you’ll gain by trashing it

YOUR MAC’S BUILT–IN primary drive, called Macintosh HD by default, is where all your files are stored, unless you saved them to an external drive. Check both for anything you don’t need to keep.

1 Get an overview

The status bar at the foot of any Finder window (show or hide it with Cmd+/) lists free space on the current drive. For more detail, choose About This Mac from the Apple menu and click the Storage tab.