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How to Clear Disk Space on a Mac

When using your Apple Mac, you will find its disk space filling up over time. If you do not stay on top of this, the more full it gets, the slower your Apple Mac may be, and the chances of certain programs not opening. To stay on top of your space, there are several places you can regularly clean up, such as your downloads folder, your downloaded application, or your desktop items. To help you keep your Mac performing to the best of its ability, below, we have put a guide together on ways to clear your disk space on an Apple Mac. 

Sort through your downloads folder 

It’s good practice to go through your downloads folder at least once or twice a month. As time goes by, more files will accumulate if you are not doing this, causing your disk space to fill up on unnecessary items. Chances are, this folder could be the largest one you are using, and most of the items within the folder are not needed. If you do save useful documents within the folder, try to get into the habit of saving them within your documents as this can be more effective and reduce the chances of you losing files. 

Sort through your installed applications 

Like your downloads folder, over time, you will install more applications the more you use your Macbook. When you first got your device, what you installed may not be used a few years later. For this reason, when clearing disk space, review what applications have been installed on your laptop. It could be that a few can be deleted and reinstalled if you think you will need them at a later date. 

Organize your desktop 

How many things have you got saved on your desktop? Every time your Apple Mac loads, it needs to load those before you can use your laptop. That means that having a busy desktop reduces the amount of disk space you have, but it also slows down your device. Order your desktop files by size and get rid of any large files that you don’t use anymore. For the files that you do use, move them to your documents folder, as this will speed up the loading of your Mac. 

Remove duplicate files 

Unless you regularly clean up your Mac, we would be very surprised if you do not have duplicate files. Duplicate files take up unnecessary space and often come in the form of downloaded files, images that you have edited but saved multiple copies of, or email attachments. Use your finder to search for multiple files and delete the copied versions. Anything that requires multiple copies consider saving these in your cloud storage to take them out of your disk space. 

What method do you use to clear your disk space? Have you tried any of our methods above? Is there anything you would like to add to our article? Let us know in the comment box below.

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