Free Up Other Storage On Mac

Jul 21, 2021 The Storage pane of About This Mac is the best way to determine the amount of storage space available on your Mac. Disk Utility and other apps might show storage categories such as Not Mounted, VM, Recovery, Other Volumes, Other, Free, or Purgeable. Part 3: 4 Ways on How to Delete Other on Mac. Now that you know what the Other folder in your storage is, then it is now time for you to delete them or the files that you no longer need from your Mac device. This way, you will be able to free up more of your storage space on your Mac. Go ahead and launch the Finder app on your Mac. The limitations of Mac storage often create a problem that prevents the Mac from running smoothly, which results in inconvenience to every user. With that said, we take a look at the four ways to free up the storage space on the device manually, according to Apple. How to Free Up Storage Space Manually on Your Mac 1.

In today’s era of multi-terabyte hard drives and online storage, many of us don’t keep as close an eye on our disk usage as we used to. Still, even the largest drives fill up eventually. If you don’t know how to check your disk space use on your Mac, here’s where to look.

Options 1 and 2: From the Finder

The Finder gives you a couple ways to see how much free disk space you have. These are the easiest ways.

Preview your storage device. In macOS, if you select and item in the Finder and press the spacebar on your keyboard, you get a preview of the item. For example, if you select a text document and then press the spacebar, you can see what’s in the document without actually opening it.

You can use preview to check your storage device’s capacity. Here’s how.

1. Select the storage device on the Desktop. (To make your storage device appear on your Desktop, go to the Finder and select Finder > Preferences, click on General, and modify the setting for Show these items on the Desktop.) Or open a Finder window, look in the left column, under the Devices heading, and select the storage device.

2. Press the spacebar. You should see a window open that shows the capacity of your storage device and the available space.

3. To close the window, press spacebar again, or press Command-W, or click on the close-window icon (the circle X) in the upper left.

Finder window status bar. If you would like to have an overview of your free disk space at all times from the Finder, you can turn on the Finder’s status bar.

1. Open a Finder window if you don’t have one open already (click the Finder’s Dock icon or go to File > New Finder Window).

2. Open the View menu and select Show status bar. This will show you how many items are in the current folder, and if you’re viewing a folder on your hard drive (such as your Applications or Documents folder), you’ll also get a readout of your hard drive’s free space.

Options 3: Get Info

1. Find your hard drive in the Finder and select it. If it appears in the Finder window sidebar or on the Desktop (it doesn’t by default—go to Finder > Preferences to change that), click your hard drive’s icon in either of those spots. If your hard drive icon doesn’t appear there, go to Go > Computer, then click the hard drive icon under Devices.

2. Click the File menu, and select Get Info, or press Comand-I on your keyboard.

The Info window shows the capacity, available space, and used space, as well as other information.

Option 4: About This Mac

In recent versions of macOS (Yosemite or later), you can easily check your disk usage from the About box.

1. Open the Apple menu, then select About This Mac.

2. Click the Storage tab in the toolbar to see how much disk space you have available. (On OS X Mountain Lion or Mavericks, click the More info button, then click Storage.)

You also get a simplified overview of what sort of files are eating up your storage space.

Option 5: From Disk Utility

You can also view your free disk space from your Mac’s Disk Utility app. Open Spotlight by clicking the magnifying glass in the upper-right corner of the screen, then type Disk Utility in the search box that appears. Once Disk Utility comes up in the list and is highlighted, press the Enter key. Disk Utility is also found in Applications > Utilities.

Once Disk Utility opens, select your hard drive’s name from the list. You can see your drive’s capacity, its available space, its used space, and other info. You can also check the free space for any drive you have connected to your Mac from this window, be it a USB flash drive or external hard drive.

October 11, 2019Nicole Jones

After drinking your first cup of coffee, it is time to start your day with your computer. However, the popping-up message says “Your disk is almost full”. You need to optimize storage to save space on Mac. The dreadful Mac storage is almost full message make you realize that how much stuff stored on your Mac. Well, you may get shocked that “Other” takes up the most storage space.

What is Other on Mac storage? It is easy to understand about “Audio”, “Movies”, “Photos”, “Apps” and “Backups”. But what does “Other” mean in Mac storage? Is there any way to clean up Other storage on Mac? Luckily, you can figure out what is Other storage on Mac and how to remove files from Other storage in details here.

Part 1: What You Need to Know about Other Storage on Mac
What Is Other on Mac Storage
How to Check Other Storage on Mac
Part 2: How to Delete Other Storage to Free Up Disk Space on Mac
1. Remove Unwanted Documents to Free Up Other Storage on Mac
2. Delete Cache Files in Other Mac Storage
3. Clear Large Files and Folders to Clean Up Mac Other Files
4. Clean Up App Plugins and Extensions from Other on Mac Storage

Part 1: What You Need to Know about Other Storage on Mac

Let’s solve the first question together. What is Other storage space in Mac OS X? Which category should Other belong to? Just read and get your answer.

What Is Other on Mac Storage

Generally speaking, all Mac files that cannot be divided into “Apps”, “Photos” and other categories are Other files. These are some data types that are stored in Other storage on Mac.

System and temporary files about macOS, like logs, preferences files and more.
Cache data from browser, apps, photos, system, etc.
Documents in pdf, doc, psd, csv, etc.
Personal information.
Browser history, cache, downloads and more.
Archives and disk images in zips, dmg, iso, tar, etc.
App support, app accessories, iCloud files, screen saver, fonts, updates and other file types not recognized by Spotlight.

How to Check Other Storage on Mac

Unfold the “Apple” menu.

Choose “About This Mac”.

Click “Storage” to check the Other storage space on Mac.

Part 2: How to Delete Other Storage to Free Up Disk Space on Mac

After knowing what is Other on Mac storage, you need to take measures to delete Other storage on Mac. It is impossible to entirely get rid of Other on Mac. But you can clean up your Mac Other storage in multiple aspects. It is true that you can find and delete each Other file manually. If you want to get a quicker way to clear Other storage on Mac, Aiseesoft Mac Cleaner is your first choice. You can download the free version from its official site.

1. Remove Unwanted Documents to Free Up Other Storage on Mac

Way 1: Manually Delete Other Documents on Mac

Close all windows. Press “Command” and “F” keys on the desktop.

Click “This Mac” on the top.

From the first drop-down menu, replace “Kind” with “Other”.

Choose “File Size” and “File Extension” in the popping-up “Search Attributes” window.

Input different document file types and file sizes to access large documents.

Check and delete the files you don’t need.

Way 2: Quickly Delete Large and Old Files from Other

Free download, install and run Mac Cleaner.

Click “Cleaner” to access all Mac cleaning tools. Then choose “Large & Old Files” in the main interface.

Click “Scan” to start the scanning process.

Click “View” to review the classified files via “> 100MB”, “5 MB to 10 MB”, “> 1 Year” and “> 30 Days”.

Click “Clean” to delete the selected files and delete Other files on Mac.

2. Delete Cache Files in Other Mac Storage

Way 1: Manually Delete Cache files from Other Data Storage

Choose “Go to Folder” from the “Go” drop-down list in the Finder.

Type “~/Library/Caches” and press “Enter” to locate the “Caches” folder.

Make a copy of the Caches folder with your external hard drive if necessary.

Drag and drop all files within the Cache folder to Trash. Empty Trash on Mac.

Repeat the above steps with “/Library/Caches” and “~/Library/Logs” to clean up Other storage on Mac.

Way 2: Quickly Delete User Cache Files to Free Up More Space

Launch Aiseesoft Mac Cleaner.

In the “Cleaner” section, click “System Junk” in the first place.

Click “Scan” to find system cache, application cache and more junk files.

Choose “View” to have a check. You can preview and select the system cache and application cache you want to delete.

Click “Clean” to remove cache files from Other on Mac storage.

3. Clear Large Files and Folders to Clean Up Mac Other Files

Way 1: Manually Delete System and Temporary Files from Other on Mac

Open Finder. Unfold the “Go” list. Then choose “Go To Folder”.

Type “~/Users/User/Library/Application Support/” or “~/Library/Application Support”. Later, click “Go” to go to the destination folder.

Open the certain folder to find and delete useless system files.

Way 2: Quickly Clean System Files and Logs from Other Storage Space

Open Mac Cleaner. Choose “System Junk” in the “Cleaner” section.

Clean Up Storage On Mac

Click “Scan” to scan for all system junk files in a short time.

Click “View” to access system cache, application cache, system logs, user logs and localization. You can see how many Other storage those files use.

Select and preview the outdated system files.

Click “Clean” to delete Other on Mac flexibly.

4. Clean Up App Plugins and Extensions from Other on Mac Storage

Way 1: Remove Extensions and Plugins from Safari

Open Safari. Choose “Preferences” from the list.

Click “Extensions” to access all Safari extensions.

Click “Uninstall” to uninstall a Safari extension.

Way 2: Remove Extensions and Plugins from Google Chrome

Run Google Chrome.

Find and click the three-dot “More Tools” on the top right corner.

Choose “Extensions” from its submenu.

Disable any Chrome extension or plugin you do not want to use anymore.

Furthermore, you can also use the built-in app uninstaller, duplicate finder, file manager, unarchiver, file hider, system performance monitor and more here. In a word, you can delete Other on Mac and speed up Mac in clicks. Mac Cleaner is 100% safe to use. You can preview, filter, organize and select any Mac file before cleanup. The whole process will not cause data overwritten. You will never know how fast your Mac computer can be before running Aiseesoft Mac Cleaner. Well, why not free download the program to have a try right now!

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