Mac System Storage Huge

MacBook storage issue is still a relevant one in 2020. The promised 1 TB of storage — which is the capacity of the upcoming MacBook Air 2020 — will still be not enough for many. We generate more and more content on our devices and use apps that are bursting with cache files. This is what creates the cryptic category of “Other” storage on Mac.

On recent macOS versions this storage category is labeled “other volumes in container”. Which, of course, doesn’t make it any less cryptic. This category contains junk files as well as important ones. That’s why you have to learn to properly check storage on Mac.
So let’s figure out what Other Storage is and how to remove Other from your Mac.

How to Clear System Storage on Mac Manually? Clean Up Your Mac's Cache. Caches are one of the biggest culprits as to why your Mac’s system storage is getting full. So for you to be able to delete the system storage on Mac, go ahead and clean up your Mac’s cache: Launch Finder on your Mac. Mac Cleaner Smart cleaning tool for Mac that helps you locate and delete all kinds of junk files to free up storage space. Best Mac uninstaller that can uninstall apps on Mac completely with the leftover files to speed up Mac. Your trusted privacy protection expert that can clear all browers' tracking cookies, searching histories and other data.

What is Other on Mac Storage?

Simply, Other storage on Mac consists of files that do not easily fall into the clearer category labels like 'Audio.' The types of 'Other' files would include:

Documents like PDF, .psd, .doc, etc.
macOS system and temporary files.
Cache files like user cache, browser cache, and system cache.
Disk images and archives like .zip and .dmg.
App plugins and extensions.
Everything else that doesn’t fit into the main macOS categories.

Like this file:

What’s this? A song? An unknown archive? Why on Earth it weighs 200 MB?

How to check Mac disk space usage

A few years back Apple introduced “Optimized Storage”, a great feature for finding out how your disk space is structured. This is how to check storage on Mac.

Open the Apple menu (top right corner)
Now, click About this Mac >Storage

Is your disk approaching full capacity? Now, click “Manage.” The sidebar to the left is really enlightening. This is the only place where on your Mac it shows the size of your apps, books, and documents in gigabytes.

Where is Other Storage on a Mac

To show you where it is, let’s look at your Library. This is where your macOS keeps application components, widgets, and various cache archives. This part of your Mac is hidden from view for a reason. Messing up a few folders here may break your Mac. But let’s take a look:
Click on Finder > Go (in the top menu).
Now paste in: Library/Caches

See those small folders? This is where your “Other” storage is. You’ve found it. Now, we'll see what's possible to delete.

How to delete Other Storage on Mac

You can’t entirely get rid of Other on Mac but you can reduce how much storage space it takes up. We’re now going to look at each of the six types of Other files and show you how to clean up your Mac. We’re going to walk you through deleting useless documents, junk system files, system slowing cache files, old backups, and all sorts of other junk.

1. Remove documents from Other Storage space

You might not think that pure text documents take up a lot of space but you may be surprised at the size of some .pages and .csv files. And that’s before you start adding images, downloading ebooks, and creating big presentations. Soon your Other documents can start to get out of hand.

To find and remove large and unneeded documents from Other Storage manually:

From your desktop press Command + F.
Click This Mac.
Click the first dropdown menu field and select Other.
From the Search Attributes window tick File Size and File Extension.
Now you can input different document file types (.pdf, .pages, etc.) and file sizes to find large documents.
Review the items and then delete as needed.

Luckily, there’s a much quicker and more thorough way. By using a CleanMyMac X you are presented with a clear view of all the massive files occupying your Other space.

To locate large hidden files in all folders with CleanMyMac:

Open CleanMyMac X and click on Large & Old Files tab
Click big Scan button to start the search
Now, review the results broken down by different categories: archives, documents, movies etc.
Look through your files and delete the ones you no longer need.

What’s great about this method is that you can sort the files by their size and thus free up space most effectively. And there’s a special category for Other files that don’t fit into either category. These files can be also moved to another folder/separate disk or could be removed securely.

In addition to this, you can empty up a few more gigabytes taken up by Dropbox folder and your Trash.

You can download CleanMyMac X here (it's free to download from developer's site).
In the top right bar (where the time and language is displayed) you’ll find a small Mac icon that takes you to the CleanMyMac X’s Menu.

Click on CleanMyMac X Menu icon (within the upper bar)
Locate windows for Trash and Dropbox
Click Empty to instantly free up space

No try it and see how it helps you slim down Other storage on Mac. Deleting your old files alone can recover you tons of space, but there are more space hoggers that fall under the Other data category.

2. Clean up Other space of system and temporary files

Every second your Mac is on, the macOS creates and piles up system files — logs, for example. At some point, the system needs these files, but they quickly become outdated and just sit there wasting your disk space. And guess what, they are in the Other Mac storage category, too.

These files are mostly temporary but they never actually go away unless you do something about it. The difficulty is that Apple hasn’t made it easy to clear out system files. There’s a good reason for this – people often delete things they shouldn’t.

Let's inspect your Library folder

To manually find where a majority of apps temporary files live navigate to ~/Users/User/Library/Application Support/. In this folder you will find your applications and some searching will reveal a lot of space being taken up. For example, your may have gigabytes worth of old iOS backups in ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup.

You could delete these manually but a much safer and faster method is to use a specialist cleaning app like CleanMyMac X. It has a System Junk module that specifically looks for useless system files and knows what’s safe to delete.

Here’s how to easily remove system files from Other Storage:

Go to System Junk in CleanMyMac.
Hit Scan.
Hit Clean.

That’s pretty much it. Seriously. If this is the first time you ever cleaned your Mac, you’ll see that the OS X Other storage tab has shrunk considerably after the system junk cleanup.

Mac System Storage Is Huge

Using this method I was able to additionally delete 4.75 GB of 'System Junk' from my MacBook.

Mac Os Mojave System Storage Huge

3. Delete cache files from Other data section

Cache files are not just another invisible storage hog. They are often one of the worst offenders, often taking up gigabytes of precious space. The three main types cache are – browser, user, and system. Cache files are meant to help your system work faster, but over time they get bigger and bigger, eventually slowing your system down.

To manually clear cache files on Mac:

Navigate to Go > Go To Folder.
Type in ~/Library/Caches and click Go.
Click-hold Option and drag the Caches folder to your desktop as a backup in case something goes wrong.
Select all the files in the Caches folder.
Drag them to the Trash.
Empty Trash.

Follow the same steps for /Library/Caches (without the “~”) and ~/Library/Logs. Cache files sit in numerous folders, and with a little patience, you can clean them out manually (read more detailed instruction on clearing cache).

Did you know: Each time you rotate an image it’s copy is automatically created on your drive. So, just 4 rotations are enough to turn a 2.5 MB file into 10 MB of disk space occupied.

For those who don’t have the time or are worried about deleting the wrong files, CleanMyMac can quickly and safely do the job.

If you already cleaned out system files from step 2, congratulations, in doing so you also cleared out your cache files. If you didn’t, here are the steps again:

Go to System Junk in CleanMyMac.
Hit Scan.
Hit Clean.

This will clear all the cache files on your Mac and considerably reduce Other storage on your Mac.

4. Remove app plugins and extensions from Other storage

Another cool way to manage storage on Mac.
While apps are, unsurprisingly, categorized as Apps on the Storage bar, their add-ons are under the Other storage category.Compared to some types of files, app plugins and extensions probably won’t take up as much of your Mac's Other space. Still, every bit counts. Since extensions can sometimes cause other problems on your Mac, why not remove the ones you don’t use to be safe and free up some extra Other storage space at the same time?

Tracking down all your add-ons can be a hassle. Some you’ve forgotten you had (like that nCage extension for Chrome), others you didn’t know of in the first place.

Here’s how to manually remove extensions from Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.

To remove extensions from Safari:

Open Safari browser.
Click on Preferences.
Click on the Extensions tab.
Select the extension you want to target and uncheck “Enable” to disable or click “Uninstall” to remove.

To remove extensions from Chrome browser:

Open Chrome.
Click the three dot icon in the top-right corner.
Click More tools > Extensions.
Disable or remove as you choose.

To remove extensions from Firefox:

Open Mozilla Firefox browser.
Click on the burger menu in the top-right corner.
Choose Add-ons.
From the Extensions and Plugins tabs disable and remove whatever you want.

Important! If you’re not sure what a plugin does, don’t rush to remove it. Try disabling it first and see if your apps and your system work as expected. You can always remove that add-on later. Also note that Chrome extensions can’t be deleted automatically. But if you’d like to get rid of them, we’ll list these extensions for you and tell how to do that manually.

5. Clear Other space of disk images and archives

Normally, archives and images are files you keep for a reason. However, if you think you might have accumulated some useless .zip and .dmg files on your Mac, then you should definitely clear them out as well.

You can find these files using Spotlight search:

Open Finder.
Type DMG/ZIP in the search field.
Select Search: This Mac.
Sort the results by Size.

Finder will show you all files of the format you’ve specified, sorted by size. You can clean out those you don’t need.

To safely and easily remove all your old unused disk images, CleanMyMac X has a dedicated tool within the System Junk module. Everything is categorized so you have a better understanding of what you’re removing.

Go to System Junk module in CleanMyMac X
Click Scan and when it’s done, click Review Details

Now you get a detailed overview of some ultra-specific categories of files that are normally invisible to you. Among those you’ll see Unused Disk Images (another name for DMG installations). Then, there’s Old Updates — you would like to remove those too. Safari extensions mac. Old Updates are past versions of update packages that you already got installed.

Do you often use use graphic editors like Photoshop or Sketch? Then, you’ll probably be fascinated by Document Versions feature. If you click on Document Versions tab (System Junk > Scan > Review Details), you’ll be able to see how much of your space is taken by large document re-edits. Imagine a 60 MB Photoshop file cloned 10 times with just slight differences. In CleanMyMac X you can delete these intermediate revisions. And, handy enough, the program keeps just the original file and its final revision on the drive.

6. Get rid of everything else from Other disk space

Even Other storage space has its own “other” files and no, the irony of that statement is not lost on us.

Mp4 converter download mac. Other storage on Mac can also include:

Files in your user library (screen savers, for example).
Files Spotlight search doesn’t recognize.

Typically, they won’t be as big of a share of Other data on your Mac as cache files and other items we’ve cleared out. However, if you’re determined to clean out as much Other Mac storage as possible, here’s how you can delete screensavers:

Open Finder.
In the Menu bar, select Go > Go to Folder.
Type this: ~/Library/Screen Savers and click Go.

You’ll see the screen saver files now — they are lightweight, but for the sake of being thorough, you can trash them as well.

As for files Spotlight doesn’t recognize, they are rare. They could include files like Windows Boot Camp partitions or virtual machine hard drives. If you don’t recall putting anything like that on your Mac, you probably have nothing to look for.

7. See your disk contents through a Space Lens

Some apps, like Daisy Disk or CleanMyMac create a visual map of your entire drive. It’s an amazing way to see your Mac as it is under the hood — with bubbles of different sizes representing each file category. But what’s most important, you can delete your useless files right from there. It's so cool you can manage storage on Mac in a visual way:

Run the Space Lens tool in CleanMyMac X — A link to a free version from developer’s site
Explore the bubbles
Delete files you don’t need

How much can you expect to delete from Other storage on Mac?

You’ll never remove Other data section from Mac entirely, nor should you want to. It’s perfectly fine to have space taken up by necessary files, whatever category label they have. What is not okay is valuable storage space being wasted.

Download CleanMyMac and follow the steps in this guide to clean gigabytes off Other storage on your Mac.
Your lighter and faster Mac will love you for it. =)

These might also interest you:

/Mac Cleaner /How Much Space Does macOS Take - Check & Free up System Storage

Are you curious about how much space does MacOS take? Let’s get a closer look at MacOS High Sierra in this new article! Read along.

Apple macOS 10.14 Mojave was released to the public on September 24, 2018, and you may want to know how much space does macOS Mojave takes. New versions of macOS bring new features and designs that can improve the user experience. However, you must note that it takes a lot of space on your device to run successfully.

You cannot download the update unless you have freed some space enough for it. Today we will learn how much space does Mac OS take and what are the best practices to improve the device performance.

How Much Space Does macOS High Sierra Take?

In order to run High Sierra on Mac, you will need at least 8 GB of available disk space. Once you do the upgrade to macOS High Sierra, you’ll get more free disk space because of the new Apple File System and HEVC which is a new encoding standard for videos.

Article GuidePart 1. How Much Space Does MacOS High Sierra Take?Part 2. How to Get More Space on Mac?Part 3. How to Upgrade to Mac OS High Sierra?Part 4. Summary

Part 1. How Much Space Does MacOS High Sierra Take?

If your Mac has been running on macOS 10.12 well it should also run smoothly with macOS 10.13 High Sierra without any issues at all. All Mac models and devices from 2009 like Mac Book, iMac, and Mac Book Retina and 2010 models such as Mac Mini, Mac Pro, Mac Book Air, and Mac Book Pro are compatible with the MacOS High Sierra.

However, if you are unsure which mac os version you’re using, you can find it by going to the device information of your Mac, to do this, open the Apple menu and click on ‘About this Mac’.

How much disk space does macOS use? In order to run High Sierra on your Mac, you will need at least 8 GB of available disk space. I know this space is a lot but once you did the upgrade to macOS High Sierra, you’ll get more free space because of the new Apple File System and HEVC which is a new encoding standard for videos.

Tip: Here recommend a powerful tool named iMyMac Mac Cleaner to remove the purgeable space on Mac so that you will have more space to upgrade the macOS High Sierra. Just have a free trial below to save more space now!

Smart cleaning tool for Mac that helps you locate and delete all kinds of junk files to free up storage space.Best Mac uninstaller that can uninstall apps on Mac completely with the leftover files to speed up Mac.Your trusted privacy protection expert that can clear all browers' tracking cookies, searching histories and other data.Free Download

By these two newly added features your photos, videos, apps, and other files will consume less space on your Mac. Sound cool? Start the upgrade now.

Part 2. How to Get More Space on Mac?

After knowing how much space does macOS Catalina take, you should get more space on Mac to run macOS. Mac system taking up 300GB? Too much space! How many GB should system take up on Mac? How much storage does Mac have this time? If your Mac is running slowly does not have enough space to accommodate the new macOS then you may see “Your startup disk is almost full” on your screen. It could be clogged with junk files and unimportant files.

The longer we use our devices, the more unneeded and unimportant files we store in it that later on can cause slow performance. Some even affect the way the device boots up because they have a login and startup files included. Especially files in the Other, if you want to know what is Other in Mac storage, just check the provided link.

The best thing to do is to remove these unneeded files permanently so you can get a faster Mac plus more space for the new MacOS update. However, deleting them manually may take time so better use an automatic program to remove the junk files with ease.

There are programs to clean up Mac that can easily erase these junks without too many steps involved. Just like Mac Cleaner, offered by iMyMac. It is a powerful program that eliminates all the clutters that affects the performance of the device.

This is an effective and efficient software solution to erase junks, clear browser and system caches, and more. How can Mac Cleaner help you in cleaning up the junks from your Mac? First, you need to download Mac Cleaner and install it on your Mac.

Next, follow these steps on how to clear system storage on macOS High Sierra effectively use this program.

Once you have successfully installed Mac Cleaner, click on Master Scan among the options from the left panel
Click the Scan button and wait until the software completes the scanning
After the scanning, review all the results and carefully select the junk files you wish to remove
Click on the ‘Clean’ button
Cleanup is completed

You may also use other options such as Duplicate Finder and Large & Old Files. These two will also help you free up some space on your Mac and be able to upgrade to the latest Mac OS.

Mac Cleaner also helps you scan and analyze the network status of your device. The next time you will experience, latency or apps slowing down, use Mac Cleaner to check and determine what is really going on with your device.

Tip: Speaking to apps, you may want to remove some unneeded apps on your Mac to save more space. Here we recommend another tool named PowerMyMac Uninstaller to help you. You can check how it works when uninstalling Anaconda on Mac.

Your Mac has now plenty of space needed to accommodate the new Mac OS. Simply follow the instructions given by Apple on how to proceed with the update or you can follow these steps below.

Part 3. How to Upgrade to Mac OS High Sierra?

Do Mac Updates take up space? Yes it does. But just some, you need to upgrade to the newer version for better Mac performance. Now that you are ready with the upgrade, first create a backup just to make sure your important files are safe and secured.

Time Machine Backups

Setup your Time Machine so that you can easily create a backup with an external drive.

Get an external drive to be used for Time Machine backup
Upon connecting, you will be asked if you want to use the drive and create a backup via Time Machine. Choose Use Backup Disk
Choose your external drive on the list
You can check the ‘Backup Automatically’ if needed
Wait until the backup is finished

Remember that the first time you backup using Time Machine will take a long time to complete. This is normal though. However, after a series of backups, Time Machine will only backup the files that were changed and added for faster process later on.

Download New Mac OS

Right after making sure that you have your own backup, you can download the new Mac OS through the App Store.

Go to the App Store on your Mac
Go directly to the MacOS High Sierra page or you can search for it
Click the download button
Once the download is completed, it automatically installs the new OS
Simply follow the onscreen instructions to finish the upgrade

Remember that during the upgrade, the device will keep on restarting several times, this is normal and some activities might be slow until the upgrade is finished. When the upgrade is fully completed, you may now continue where you left.

Part 4. Summary

Now that you are aware of how much space does Mac OS take, you can be ready at any time there is a new upgrade released. Of course, don’t forget to clean up your entire system and free it from junks and clutters that are often the suspects of space-hogging.

Use Mac Cleaner by iMyMac to save you from all the hassles of manual deletion. When the latest MacOS Mojave comes out sooner, for sure you are among the firsts to download and try! Share this with your friends and let them know!

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