

Sounds like a place where I might be able to clean up some files. In the screenshot below, clicking on iOS Files shows that “device backups and software updates” are being stored.

Clicking each one of the listed items tells me what’s actually being stored. (This view shows how much storage is used for specific purposes as seen in the left sidebar.)Īs you can see in the screenshot above, iOS Files, Photos, Documents and Parallels VMs (virtual machines) take up the majority of the space on my iMac. While you can click those recommendation buttons to save some storage space, it’s more instructive to look at the list of apps or files in the left sidebar of this window to see what’s taking up an unusual amount of space.

This initially shows a list of how much space is being used for various things and a set of recommendations like “Store in iCloud”, “Optimize Storage”, “Empty Trash Automatically”, and “Reduce Clutter”. To get a better idea of how storage space is being used, click the Manage… button that’s located to the right of the drive icon. That sounds like something I may be able to get rid of, but I’ll need to know what they’re used for. While hovering your cursor above the various colors and shades listed under each drive capacity shows the type of files taking up space, you may find that some of the labels don’t make sense - for example, the red area on the Macintosh HD shows that I have 115.26 GB of iOS files. Below, you see that I have a lot of space available on my 2 TB Fusion Drive, a 4 TB backup drive that’s about 2/3 full, and an install disk that’s wide open. Click on the Storage tab, and System Information displays how much storage each attached drive contains. One way to start looking is to click the Apple menu, then select About This Mac. The first thing you’ll want to do is find out how much storage is being used on your Mac, and for what purposes. But what if you have something like an older MacBook Air with very limited storage - 64GB - that is much more difficult to upgrade? In this article, we’ll show some simple ways to free up storage space on your Mac. For those of you with Macs that can be easily upgraded with a new internal drive from OWC, your solution may be to purchase and install a drive with more capacity. Fast forward a few months or years, and you may start finding that you’re running out of storage. Owning a new Mac is a great feeling - it’s the fastest it’s ever going to be, there are no scratches or dings on the computer, and you have what seems like an unlimited amount of storage space.
