Summary :
Storage in computing refers to the space of disk. To check storage on a computer means to check disk space on it. The way to check storage on different platform is slightly different. This article focuses on how to view storage on Mac.
MiniTool Software can help you take good care of your data on Mac.
In the right-pane, you will see the storage space occupied by each Application on your Mac. Similarly, you can click on Documents, Music and other tabs to see the amount of storage space taken up by Documents, Music and other items on your Mac. Check Storage on Mac Using Finder. The first step is to enable Hard Disk in Finder side-bar menu. 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. Only Apple recommends buying its Macs with 128GB of SSD storage, because only Apple is trying to hit a price point. Everyone else — including us — will tell you that you need more, but nobody.
In today's era of information, it's a normal thing to process a lot of data in every single day. Users need to keep an eye on how much disk space is used and how much is left now and then. After all, even the largest drives fill up eventually. Apple doesn't make Mac storage readily available since many Mac users didn't check it often.
However, it's necessary to know how to check storage on Mac sometimes. In the following content, I'll show you how to check space on Mac in detail.
How to Check Storage on Mac
You need to check the storage space especially when your Mac is running slow; you must keep about ten percent of the space free in order to maintain stable performance. If your Mac drive is almost full, you should delete some useless files and uninstall unused applications. Otherwise, you'll need to buy a new drive with large capacity to replace the old one.
How to check Mac storage in 5 different ways?
FYI: how to recover deleted files from Mac quickly?
Believe it or not, we can make it easy to recover deleted data on Mac even if you are totally a novice.
Preview Storage Device in Finder
- Click Finder on the desktop.
- Choose Preferences.
- Select General from the menu.
- Check the storage device – Hard disks – under Show these items on the desktop to make it appear on your desktop.
- Go to select the storage device on the desktop.
- Press the spacebar and a window will pop up.
- Look for the capacity section to check the storage.
- Press the spacebar again or press Command-W to close the window. (You can also click on the circle X button in the upper left corner to close it.)
Show Status Bar in Finder
- Go to select File.
- Choose New Finder Window. (You can also open a Finder window by clicking on the Dock icon of Finder.)
- Select View from the menu bar.
- Choose Show Status Bar from the submenu.
- Look at the status bar at the bottom; it shows you how many items you have in the opening drive/folder and how much space left/available on the drive.
Turn to Disk Utility
How to check disk space on Mac by using the Disk Utility app:
- Click the magnifying glass at the top right to open Spotlight.
- Type disk utility into the search box.
- Choose Disk Utility from result or press Enter when it is highlighted. (You can also go to Applications and Utilities to find Disk Utility.)
- Select the hard drive from the list. The Disk Utility window will show you the hard drive capacity, used space and available space, drive type, and other information.
Refer to About This Mac
How to view storage on Mac directly:
- Go to the Apple menu (presented by an Apple icon).
- Select About This Mac from it.
- Shift to the Storage tab at the top.
- It shows you directly how much free space is left of the total capacity. Besides, you can take a look at how much space each file type takes up.
This method is suitable for recent versions of macOS (Yosemite and later).
Use Get Info Feature
- Open Finder and select the hard drive from the left sidebar. (You can also select it from the desktop.)
- Select File from the menu bar.
- Choose Get Info from the drop-down list. (You can also press Comand-I.)
- You'll see a lot of information in the open-up window: capacity, used space, available space, drive format, system version, etc.
How to view storage on Mac if the hard drive icon doesn't appear? Please select Go, choose Computer, and click the hard drive icon under Devices to make it appear first; then, follow the steps mentioned above.
There's also another way to find storage on Mac: using third-party disk manager designed for Mac.
That's all about how to check storage on Mac by yourself.
Nov 13, 2020 • Filed to: Solve Mac Problems • Proven solutions
In today's age of terabytes based hard drives, solid-state drives, and cloud storage, it is easy to forget about the storage limits of your Mac. You keep on upgrading your operating system and installing software without even checking their storage needs. Eventually, Mac's HD space runs out, and it does not function properly.
Sure, you can upgrade the hard drive and keep going, but that would cost you hundreds of dollars. Adobe reader download mac catalina. Therefore, you have to rely on regular monitoring and storage space optimization.
So, let's get down and see the steps for these tasks.
Part 1- How to See Disk Space on Mac
For optimizing your Mac's hard drive space, start by monitoring the storage. It will give you a basic idea about the type of files occupying the hard drive and find the data that can be deleted.
The following are the different ways that you can use to check your storage space.
With 'About This Mac'
The recent versions of iOS come with an 'About This Mac' feature to help you with storage space monitoring.
Check hard drive space Mac with the following steps:
Step 1: Open the Apple Menu
In the regular home interface of Macbook, there is an apple icon located in the top-left corner. Click on this button.
Step 2: Open the 'About This Mac' tab
In the menu that pops after clicking the Apple icon, find and select the 'About This Mac' option.
Step 3: Open Storage Detail
The about tab will have multiple options and is set to 'Overview' by default. From the available options, click on the 'Storage.'
The storage tab will display all your disks along with the data of file types on your HD storage partitions. Camino browser mac.
Using Disk Utility
MacBook has an in-built utility application that provides you access to the memory details. The following steps will show you how to see disk space on Mac using this app.
Step 1: Open Search Bar
There is a spotlight icon on your Macbook screen. It usually sits on the menu bar near the networking icon and the clock. Click on this icon to open a search bar.
Step 2: Search Disk Utility
Write 'disk utility' and press 'Enter' to search it.
Step 3: Open Utility
You will see disk utilities in the results window; double click it.
In the disk utilities, select the name of your hard drive. It will present you with a detailed view of your drive. You can use it to see free disk space Mac and drive's total capacity.
Part 2. How to Clear Disk Space on Mac
Now that you know how to find disk space on Mac devices, let's move to the next phase, cleaning your storage.
The following section will guide you with the various methods you can use to free up the hard drive. Take a look.
Remove The Duplicated files.
There are various instances when a Mac user downloads the same data twice or creates a copy and forgets to delete the original file. This duplicated file stays in the system and can cover considerable space. Deleting these files can free up disk space for Mac to a great extent.
There are two ways to deal with them. You can either do it manually or with an application.
- Manual
Step 1: Open Finder window
Step 2: Click 'File' in the menu bar
Step 3: Navigate to 'New Smart Folder' and click on it.
Step 5: Click on the '+' in the top right corner.
Mac Disk Space Usage
Step 6: Select the parameters like file type, name, date, kind
The smart folder will search the memory and show you all the files with your fed parameters. You can manually browse the list and delete the repetitive ones.
- Software-Based
There are a lot of applications that you can use to clear disk space Mac and remove redundancy issues. The procedure to use the software will depend on its developers and suppliers. So, in this case, you will have to refer to their website or manual.
Empty the Trash Can
The quickest way to free up disk space Mac is to delete its files permanently. You can do it by long clicking the trash can icon and then selecting 'empty trash' in the interface that pops up.
Mac will ask for a confirmation and then permanently delete the files from the trash can.
Uninstall Old Application
You may have rarely used or older version software on your system. Removing them will add to your HD space and also boost system startup time.
The following are the steps you can use to access the software list and delete the unnecessary programs.
Step1: Open Finder by clicking its icon in the menu bar
Step 2: Navigate to the application option
Step 3: Select the application and delete it by dragging or sending it to the trash can.
Step5: Empty the trash can
How To Check Startup Disk Storage Mac
Clean iTunes Backup Files
If you use your Macbook for generating backups of your iTunes, iPhone, or iPad, you will have a bunch of massive backup files on your system. Cleaning these files can boost anywhere from a few GBs to a few hundred GBs.
So open the '~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup' path and delete all the randomly named folders in the location.
Erase Temporary Files
The application that runs on your Macbook creates some temporary files and cache that remains in the HD storage even after closing the application.
Removing them can free up some hard disk space and also enhance your system's processing performance.
Step1: Open the 'Go' menu from the menu bar and click on 'Go to Folder'
(You can also use the shortcut keys: Shift+CMD+G)
Step 2: In the dialog box that opens, enter '~/Library/Caches.'
Step3: Select all the file by pressing CMD+A and delete them
(You can create a backup by moving the data to a flash drive)
Once all the files are in the trash can, empty it and delete the files permanently. Then you can move to your browsers. You can open their setting and remove the history, passwords, and other saved data to save some space.
One thing that you must know is that these temporary files will need timely cleanup. The application needs them and builds them again and again. The only reason to delete them is that the new cache files are much compact than the older ones. They are light that makes them less vulnerable to crashing or corruption issues.
Clear Language Files
When you buy a Macbook, it comes with multiple language packages. It's essential to ensure that any user around the world can use the MacBook. However, these language packages occupy a lot of storage space, and you don't even need them all. So, it is a wise choice to delete the unnecessary ones. They will empty some space and also make your system faster by reducing the boot-up load.
However, removing the language packages manually is complicated and risky. So, you have to deploy a specific application for it. The best app that you can use is Monolingual. It is free and easy to use.
Simply download the application, drag it to the application folder, and run it. Monolingual will show you a list of available languages; you can uncheck the once you use and remove the other packages.
Delete Email Attachments
If you are using the Macbook's inbuilt mail app for a long time, the chances are that you will have a large email attachment in the drive. Most of these files will be useless for you, so deleting them is an excellent way to free up disk space for Mac and boost inbox speed.
Here's how you can delete the attachment in a single go:
Step 1: Open the storage manager by clicking the Apple menu and about this Mac
Step 2: Choose the storage device and click manage.
Step 3: Navigate to the mail option on the left side and click on it.
It will show you the details of the HD space occupied by the attachments. Click on attachment and press delete.
Use Storage Tools
Get mac os for pc. Mac comes with some inbuilt storage optimization programs. The programs present you with options to shift your data, clean temporary files, and many more choices.
Follow the below-mentioned steps to learn how to free up disk space on Mac by using these inbuilt options.
Step1: Open Mac hard drive space menu as you did in part 1
Step2: Click the 'manage' button that's next to your storage device
A window with several storage optimization options will pop on your screen. The following are the options that you will see in this window.
i. iCloud
iCloud is Apple's cloud-based storage services that let you shift your data from a hard drive to the cloud server. If you click this option, it will ask you to select the files and then synchronize your selected files to the cloud server. Once uploaded, you can easily delete them from your system memory. However, you will see the file's icon and can access the data at any time.
ii. Optimize Storage
This option is mainly a clean app that changes your setting to save space. It removes the iTunes downloads, prevents auto-downloads, restricts email attachments, and limits email storage space.
iii.Empty Trash Automatically
If you want to avoid emptying trash can all the time, choose this option. It restricts the duration of deletes files and auto deletes them after the set time.
iv. Reduce Clutter
Reduce clutter is a unique optimization tool. The tool checks your system for large files and presents you with data that is less frequently used. You can then choose to keep or delete it.
Closing Words
Apple Macbooks are highly integrated and advanced systems that provide a lot of advanced features. The only restriction that you can face with it is low storage spaces.
However, the tips you read in this post can help you deal with the Mac disk space issues. They will also help you keep your Macbook optimized, fast, and ready for every new file.
So, get down with the work and apply these tips in your system. In case something goes wrong, don't worry, download Recoverit Mac Data Recovery to help you out. The tool is very efficient in recovering deleted data, even the permanently deleted files.
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