If you have some basic unix skills, deleting files should be easy otherwise you may be risking data loss by trying this method.
- Mac Clean Up Disk Space
- How To Free Disk Space On Mac
- How To Free Up Space On Mac
- How To Free Up Disk Space On Mac Air
If you do not have time to manually clean up your startup disk, we recommend using MacCleaner Pro to both analyze disk space usage and free up disk space. When it comes to cleaning the system disk. 1.Determine how much disk space you have Open Disk Utility (Finder Applications Utilities Disk Utility), then click your disk then click info, as seen in the following screen shot: 2.Delete items you no longer need Move files you do not need to the Trash or select an item you want to delete and press command+delete. Disk Usage: Visualize the size of your files & folders and remove the unwanted large files to free up more disk space. Free Memory: When the free memory of your Mac is insufficient, you can easily use CleanGenius to free memory and speed up your Mac for better performance. For example, the first time that I did it, I was able to free up about 7 GB of space from my startup disk without deleting anything of actual importance. Find out more about CleanMyMac or download it from MacPaw’s website if you want to see if it is the right solution for fixing your startup disk problems. Apple has come up with a well-arranged Mac Disk Utility interface that will make enlarging/resizing of a Mac Volume to be easy. Steps to Resize Mac Partition. Navigate through your menu and open Mac Disk Utility. When Mac Disk Utility opens, select the drive you want to resize. Then select Partition on the toolbar to.
Boot to single user mode holding cmd-s after powering on the computer. KB HT1492 and type the following command making sure there is a space before -uw and the /
![How To Free Up Disk Space On Mac Air How To Free Up Disk Space On Mac Air](https://cdn.setapp.com/blog/images/free-up-disk-space-1200x628.jpg)
mount -uw /
Now you are free to delete whatever you want (including system files, be careful!) Your home folder is located at /Users/
I've found that when the computer gets in this bad of shape, the following commands free up a few GB nicely.
Player unknown battlegrounds minimum specs. rm -rf '/Library/Application Support/iDVD'
rm -rf '/Library/Application Support/Garageband'
Most people rarely use this additional content and it can easily be reinstalled from the original install discs or iLife disc. It should give you about 3GB of space back, plenty enough to boot the computer and get back to a GUI for you to move your media off onto an external hard drive.
Apr 17, 2011 12:49 AM
So, your Mac is running out of storage. You try to figure out what’s taking up your disk space by clicking the Apple logo on the top-left of the screen, selecting About This Mac, and hitting the Storage tab.
To your surprise, you see a yellow bar representing “System” that seems to occupy way more space than you think it should. In the example above, it only shows 207 GB, but take a look at this Apple discussion — some Mac users report that System Storage takes an astonishing 250 GB.
Worse yet, you have no idea what’s included in “System” storage, because clicking the “Manage” button brings you to this System Information window… and the “System” row is greyed out.
Why does my Mac system require so much space?
What does it contain?
Is it safe to remove some of those system files?
How do I regain more storage space?
Mac Clean Up Disk Space
Questions like these may easily get to your head. Although my Mac now has a good amount of disk space available, I’m always wary of files that are taking up more space than they should.
I have no idea why “System” is greyed out while “Documents,” “System Junk,” “Trash,” etc. allow you to review the files based on size and type. My hunch is that Apple does this on purpose to prevent users from deleting system files that could lead to serious issues.
What Files Are Included in System Storage on Mac?
During my research, I found many people report that Apple counts iTunes backup files and app caches (e.g. Adobe video cache files) in the System category.
Since it’s greyed out and we are unable to click on that category for deeper analysis, we’ll have to use a third-party app to assist.
CleanMyMac X is perfect for this kind of analysis. Since I tested the app in our best Mac cleaner review, it immediately came to my head when I saw “System” was greyed out in Storage. Note that CleanMyMac isn’t freeware, but the new “Space Lens” feature is free to use and it allows you to scan your Macintosh HD, and then show you an in-depth overview of what’s taking up disk space on your Mac.
Step 1:Download CleanMyMac and install the app on your Mac. Open it, under “Space Lens” module, first click the yellow “Grant Access” button to allow the app to access your Mac files and then select “Scan” to get started.
Step 2: Soon it’ll show you a folder/file tree and you can hover your cursor over each block (i.e. a folder). There you can find more details. In this case, I clicked “System” folder to continue.
Step 3: The file breakdown below indicates that some Library and iOS Support files are the culprits.
The interesting part is that the System file size shown in CleanMyMac is much smaller than the size shown in System Information. This puzzles me and makes me believe that Apple definitely has counted some other files (not real system files) in the System category.
What are they? I have no clue, honestly. But as reported by other Mac users who experienced the same issue, they said Apple also considers app caches and iTunes backup files as System files.
Out of curiosity, I ran CleanMyMac again for a quick scan. That app found 13.92 GB in iTunes Junk. Further review revealed that the junk files are old iOS device backups, software updates, broken downloads, etc.
But even after adding this amount to the original system files returned by CleanMyMac X, the total size is still a bit less than what’s returned in System Information.
If cleaning the System Storage is still not enough to bring your Mac available disk space to a normal level (i.e. 20% or more), see below.
What Else Can I Do to Reclaim More Disk Space?
There are tons of ways out there. Here are a few of my favorites that should help you get back a decent amount of space quickly.
How To Free Disk Space On Mac
1. Sort all files by size and delete old large files.
Open Finder, go to Recents and look at the Size column. Click on it to sort all recent files by file size (from large to small). You’ll have a clear overview of what items are eating up a large amount of space, e.g. From 1 GB to 10 GB, and from 100 MB to 1 GB.
On my MacBook Pro, I found a few large videos that could be transferred to an external drive.
Note: If the Size column doesn’t show up, click on the Settings icon and select Arrange By > Size.
2. Remove duplicate files.
Don’t forget those duplicates and similar files! They can stack up without you being aware of it. Finding them is sometimes time-consuming. That’s what Gemini 2 is designed for. Simply select a few frequently used folders (e.g. Documents, Downloads, etc.) in the main zone of Gemini.
It then scans them and returns all the duplicate files that might be worth removing. Of course, it’s always a good practice to review them before doing so. You can also read more from our detailed Gemini review here.
Wrapping It Up
Ever since Apple introduced the Optimized Storage feature, Mac users got the option of saving space by storing content in the cloud. Apple also has several new tools that make it easy to find and remove unneeded files.
How To Free Up Space On Mac
That bar under the Storage tab is beautiful. It does allow you to get a quick overview of what’s taking up the most space on our hard drive. However, it still lacks insights into the “System” category as it’s greyed out.
How To Free Up Disk Space On Mac Air
Hopefully, the guides above have helped you figure out the reasons you’ve got so much “System” data, and most importantly you’ve reclaimed some disk space — especially for new MacBooks pre-installed with flash storage — every gigabyte is precious!