Free up Space on Your Macintosh Computer
If you are the typical computer user, you reach a point in time where you start to get low on space. Clearing space on a Mac is as easy as on a PC, but with a few minor changes.
Steps
- Open your Movies Folder. Find anything that seemed cool at the time but is now just a waste of valuable hard disk space. Since videos take up a lot of space, move any unwanted video to the Trash.
- Go to the Music/iTunes folder. These are your iTunes movie files, and if you got them from YouTube or another video site, they take up space. This is because they are not compressed as they would be if you bought them from iTunes. Don't forget to go into iTunes and delete the files from there too! (Be careful that you don't delete files you want.)
- Delete files from previous years. Check the date of your files and delete old ones.
- Delete localization files. Many programs that you install will automatically place large foreign language help files on your computer for international users. Downloading and running a program such as Monolingual will sometimes free up a gigabyte or more of hard drive space. Monolingual allows you to select which language files to keep and which to trash.
- Delete your browsing history in Safari or Firefox.
- Clear out any cached files and log files that you may have. you can use cleaner apps such as CleanMyMac, Maintenance or Tidy up.
- Delete unused Applications. Scour this folder for any applications that you don't use, and delete them with an application that removes all the related folders elsewhere on the hard drive. A good example is All cleaner.
- Empty your Trash. Delete files that are hanging around in your Trash bin.
Tips
- Don't forget to empty your trash!
Warnings
- Be careful not to delete essential programs or files.
- DO NOT reformat the disk, otherwise you'll lose all your data.
- Don't change your hard drive if you want to keep all your good files.
Things You'll Need
- Macintosh G4 or higher running Mac OS 10.4 or higher
