Emptying your Mac’s trash is a good way to clear some storage space. It’s easy to forget about these files and, before you know it, they pile up and occupy a chunk of your storage. But that doesn’t remove them, it simply stores them in a single location. When you delete files from your device, they go to the Trash.

Reduce Clutter: Manually sort through documents and other content stored on your Mac to delete what is no longer needed.Empty Trash Automatically: Turn this option on to free up space by automatically erasing items that have been in the Trash for more than 30 days.Optimize Storage: Save space by automatically removing movies and TV shows you’ve already watched.Store in iCloud: You can store all files, photos, and messages in iCloud to save space, keeping only recent files on your local Mac.A new window is displayed and it offers four things you can do to reduce your system storage (Figure 2). You’ll find it under the Apple menu > About This Mac > Storage and click Manage. Optimize Your Storage via Mac Storage ManagerĪpple offers a feature that helps you easily optimize your storage. Optimize Your Storage via Mac Storage Managerġ.There are three major ways you can accomplish this: Figure 1 Clearing Your System Data StorageĪlthough you do not have total control over your system data, there are a few things you can do to reduce the storage amount. Hover your mouse over each segment of the storage bar to see what they represent you will see the segment for System Data (as in Figure 1), etc.

To check your system storage, navigate to Apple menu > About This Mac > Storage.

Generally, it includes files that do not belong to the Documents, Apps, Music Creation, Music, Pictures, and other categories of Mac Storage. System data refers to files like browser caches, application caches, disk images, system log files, plugins, extensions, etc. The goal of this tutorial is to help you answer that question and learn some simple strategies for clearing your system data. Have you ever looked at your computer’s storage graphic only to notice the generic-sounding “system data” segment, and wondered what’s in there that could be taking up so much space?

How to free up space on mac