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Want to get the best out of your Mac? Start with checking your storage. Unnecessary files, apps, and programs slow down your Mac, but with sufficient disk space, your machine will run faster and more efficiently. Keep reading to learn how to check and maintain storage on Mac, or manage your storage automatically with a custom Mac cleanup tool.
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Check your Mac disk space to understand what exactly is taking up all your storage. From there, you can decide whether you need to delete certain files, apps, or programs.
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Like optimizing Mac security, regularly checking disk space is part of good computer hygiene — helping to ensure that your system always runs at its best. Here are three ways you can check disk space on Mac:
The About This Mac feature on macOS is an excellent resource for insights into your hardware and operating system. You can check the memory on your Mac, look over display settings and graphics, and access valuable support resources.
Here’s how to check storage on Mac with About this Mac:
Click the Apple icon in the top-left corner of your desktop and select About This Mac.
Select the Storage tab.
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Here you’ll see all the data on your drive broken down into convenient categories. Since cleaning your hard drive requires you to comb through a seemingly endless amount of files, the storage tab can help you stay organized. After looking here, you’ll have a better idea where to start searching for unnecessary files to delete.
The Finder app organizes all your documents, media, folders, and other files. Use Finder to find your hard drive on Mac, and from there, you can see the available storage on your Mac.
Here’s how to check storage via Finder:
Open the Finder app on your macOS dock.
On the left side of the window, under Devices, right-click your drive. In the menu, click Get Info.
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In the pop-up window, you can check storage space and get other useful insights about your drive.
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The Disk Utility app on macOS lets you manage internal and external storage devices. Use this app to format drives, create disk images for drive backups, and combine multiple disks to work as one.
Here’s how to use Disk Utility to check your storage:
Open the Finder app on your macOS dock.
On the left side of the window, click Applications. Open the Utilities folder.
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In the Utilities folder, open Disk Utility.
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On the left of the window, click the drive you want to check. You’ll see exactly how much space is used and how much is free (available).
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Checking storage space with Disk Utility gives you a general overview of what’s taking up Mac hard drive space. If you want a more detailed look at your storage space, try the first method mentioned above.
Over time, files, apps, and programs will take up more and more hard drive space on your Mac. Duplicates of photos, old documents, apps you’ve long forgotten, and bloatware are just some of the culprits eating up disk space.
Although you can try defragging a Mac, the most direct way to manually manage space on your Mac is to delete anything you don’t need. Cleaning up your Mac will greatly improve its performance and longevity, and it will also help speed up your Mac without needing to upgrade your Mac’s RAM or make other hardware changes.
Sifting through old files, uninstalling Mac apps, and scrolling through endless photo duplicates can quickly get tedious. That’s why our dedicated team of performance engineers built Avast Cleanup — to take care of all that tiresome work automatically.
Avast Cleanup for Mac is carefully designed to scan your disks and remove junk files, duplicates, cached data, and more — giving you a squeaky clean Mac today.
The files filling up your Mac storage will change depending on your computing habits. If you edit videos, you may have unused video files taking up disk space. Gamers may have a hard drive filled with old, long-forgotten video games. No matter what, you’re bound to accumulate unnecessary files over time.
For a detailed look at what’s filling up your disk, check the space on your Mac drive via About This Mac. The data on your drive will be organized into categories, so you’ll know exactly what’s in your drive. Cleaning your hard drive can be a daunting task, but About This Mac can help you get your bearings so you can approach it methodically.
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Old download files, random documents, duplicate photos, items in your trash — all this and more can add up to gigabytes of wasted disk space. Sifting through your hard drive takes time, but it is one way to free up disk space. Another way, which we recommend, is to use one of the best Mac cleaner software apps out there — like Avast Cleanup for Mac — that are specially designed to save time and help you clear out your cluttered Mac.
Clearing your cache is a surefire way to preserve space on any Mac. While cached data helps websites and programs load faster, the data accumulates on your drive — slowing down your whole system. Emptying your cache lets it start fresh, and clearing it regularly will help maintain free space on your Mac.
When you use About this Mac to check your disk space, you’ll see categories for your data, like Movies, Audio, Apps — as well as Other, which covers files that don’t fit into the primary categories. These (other) files can take up a lot of space, so it’s helpful to learn about Other on Mac storage and how to delete it.
We love our sleek, efficient Macs, but they’re not immune to problems. A full hard drive will slow your Mac down, and prevent you from saving new files. You may also experience system crashes and other unusual activity. Given how much time it can take to wade through all your files, it’s understandable why cleaning out your hard drive can feel like an overwhelming task.
Thankfully, Avast Cleanup for Mac makes it easy. Our dedicated cleanup tool automatically cleans out junk files, duplicate photos, old apps, and temporary data. Free up storage space and get back to a faster, smoother Mac today with Avast Cleanup.