Best Tool For Cleaning Up Other Mac Storage
Though your Other storage might have been spread out across categories in macOS Sierra and higher, you can still follow the below steps to manually clean up your Mac and get rid of unnecessary files. How to check your storage space on your Mac.
- Tool For Cleaning Up Leaves
- Best Cleanup Tool For Mac
- Best Tool For Cleaning Up Other Mac Storage Other
- Best Tool For Cleaning Up Other Mac Storage Other
- Best Tool For Cleaning Up Other Mac Storage
- Six ways to clean up your Mac. Check out the many other files that the program can delete to clear up space on your Mac. Weed out iTunes dupes. Macworld is your best source for all things.
- Optimized Storage in macOS Sierra and later can save space by storing your content in the cloud and making it available on demand. When storage space is needed, files, photos, movies, email attachments, and other files that you seldom use are stored in the cloud automatically.
- Windows 10 has a new, easy-to-use tool for freeing up disk space on your computer. It removes temporary files, system logs, previous Windows installations, and other files you probably don’t need. This tool is new in the April 2018 Update. It works similarly to the old Disk Cleanup utility, but it.
- Apple built a clean-it-up tool into macOS Sierra and High Sierra, but it isn’t obvious where to find it. Here’s what to do go to About this Mac, click the Storage tab, then click Manage next.
What is 'Other' and What Can I Do About It?
'Other' on your iDevice
When you connect your iPad, iPod Touch, or iPhone to your computer and open iTunes, you will find a graph of the space usage that may look like this:
Note the category at the end called 'Other.' What is 'Other?' iTunes has 8 standard data categories listed in the Data Bar of iTunes. They are called Apps, Music, Movies, TV Shows, Podcasts, Books, Photos, and Info. Basically, anything stored on your iDevice that cannot fit into one of those 8 categories is categorized as 'Other.' This includes:
As you can see there's a lot of stuff that ends up in 'Other.' If you never clean up things the stuff accumulates like old toys in an attic. Soon you find half the space on your iDevice is taken up by 'Other.' This is not good. You want to clean things out. So here's how you do it:
'Other' on Your Computer
On your Mac you may also see an 'Other' reported when you check on your drives using About This Mac from the Apple () menu.
When you observe the Storage display via the About This Mac dialog you will see something like this:
Note the similarity to what you might find on your iDevice. There are 5 data categories: Audio, Movies, Photos, Apps, and Backups. Anything else is categorized as 'Other.' 'Backups' refers to Time Machine Snapshots that are made when the Time Machine backup drive is not available. When the backup drive is finally reconnected, Time Machine is supposed to transfer the snapshots to the Time Machine backup drive then erase the ones on your hard drive. 'Apps' only include those found in your Applications folder. Thus, 'Other' consists of some of the same types of files found on your iDevice:
This is really a short list of what is categorized as 'Other' because it does not fit into any of the other 5 categories.
The problem is you cannot go searching out just any old files on your hard drive and deleting them. If you do you may find that your OS X system no longer works. This could lead to a lengthy reinstallation or even to erasing the hard drive and starting over from scratch. No, this is a process that requires some delicacy and finesse. Firstly, you should search your drive for large files and where they are located. Use a utility such as OmniDiskSweeper 1.8 or GrandPerspective.
Secondly, follow suggestions below for cleaning up your hard drive of unnecessary files taking up space on your hard drive.
Freeing Up Space on The Hard Drive
Empty the Trash in order to recover the space the files occupied on the hard drive. If you cannot free up enough space, then you should consider replacing the drive with a larger one. Check out OWC for drives, tutorials, and toolkits.
Thirdly, locate any duplicate files on your hard drive and delete them. You can use one of several utilities designed to locate duplicate files such as:
Hopefully, this discussion will put an end to any concerns you've had about 'Other.'
Do you wonder what is Other storage and how to clean it up on your Mac? Well, it's the home to a number of files, cached data and more. Follow this complete guide to find out more about it and clear it off to retrieve plenty of precious storage on your Mac.
The Storage tab under “About This Mac” gives a quick review of your Mac and for the majority of the times, it shows a huge “Other storage” space occupying the disk. If you have stumbled upon it and not sure about what this “Other” storage on Mac is and how to remove it, follow this guide to get to the root of it and find out the various ways to keep it in check.
Just like the “Other” on iPhone and iPad, it stores a number of different files. Hence, you will have to dig a bit deep to find the cached files and eliminate them on your Mac.
How to Check the Other Storage Space on Mac?
Since you realize that your Mac has been occupying some additional stockpiling, why not look at what amount of the disk is being used up? Furthermore, by checking the “other” storage space you can also decide if it is worth putting the effort to clear the space.
Also Read: What is Other on iPhone
To check out how much “other” storage has been consumed, simply follow the steps below.
Step #1. First off, click on Finder icon from the Dock.
Step #2. Now, click on the Apple Menu icon at the top left corner of the screen and select About This Mac.
Step #3. Click on Storage.
Now, check out the other storage space in different categories such as Movies, Apps, Photos, Audio, Backups. Also, check out the other storage space.
What is “Other” on Mac?
Most probably, “Other” takes a ton of space in most cases and the vast majority will want to clear it right sway. But stop, before you take any critical step, hold on until you understand what really “Other” means. First of all, remove this from your mind that “Other” storage is something waste. It could essentially be anything which isn’t listed in the storage types.
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Just like that, here are some examples of what can be said as “Other” things.
- Common documents and file types, including PDF, doc, PSD, etc.
- Any type of archives and disk images, including zips, dmg, iso, tar, etc.
- Your personal data.
- Files in the system folders of OS X, including temporary files, swap, voices, etc.
- Application Support, iCloud files, screensavers, etc.
- Cache items, including browser cache and locally stored message media files.
- Fonts, app accessories, application plugins, and app extensions.
- Various file and file types not recognized by Spotlight, for example, a virtual machine hard drive, Windows Boot Camp partitions, etc.
I bet you won’t want to clear up all the things after reading the list above. This means that “Other” is nothing sort of clutter or garbage. However, there are some useless things one would like to remove, specifically like system caches, temporary files, and other junk.
The “Other” category is a combination of files that are not recognized as one of the other file types. So, if you happen to delete or clear up the “Other” data stored on your computer’s disk, let’s dive into the steps involved to do the same.
How to Remove “Other” on Mac Running macOS (High) Sierra
Some people say that they have so much of space available that they really don’t need to free up some of it. Is it so? No, not at all, your disk will ultimately fill up and even if you have a huge disk, more data (perhaps useless data) means more slow computer. So here are some things you can do to clear “Other” storage and free up space on your hard drive.
Use Optimized Storage on Your Mac to Clean Up Old Files Automatically
Latest versions of macOS come with a handy feature called “Optimized Storage.” What makes it so handy is the ability to let you automatically remove the old or unused files and transfer them to iCloud. Whenever you need those files, you can re-download them. Head over to this complete guide to using it on your Mac running macOS Sierra or later.
How to Clear Cache Files on Mac
Step #1. Click on Finder icon from the Dock and then select Go menu at the top right corner of the screen.
Step #2. Now, click on Go to Folder.
Step #3. Then, you have to type ~/Library/caches into the text box.
Next, you will see the list of caches from active apps appear on your desktop.
Step #4. You need to choose the app folder you want to remove the cache from and then right-click (or control-click) on the app folder → Finally, click on Move to Trash.
How to Delete Old Device backups in iTunes on Mac
If you regularly back up your iOS device using iTunes, you may have a lot of old unnecessary backups. Knowing each backup can consume space up to 5GB, it’s better to clear them off.
Step #1. Launch iTunes on your Mac.
Step #2. Click on iTunes menu and select Preferences.
Step #3. Now, select Devices.
Step #4. Then, you need to select the backup you want to delete. Make sure not to delete the latest backup of your device. Just in case you have an iCloud backup, go ahead with the complete cleanup.
Step #5. Finally, click Delete Backup.
How to Remove Downloaded Files on Mac
Downloads folder need to be cleaned up from time to time. All the important files you download on your computer remain in this folder. Hence, it’s better to keep a check on it regularly so that it doesn’t clutter your computer.
Step #1. Click on Finder icon from the Dock and select Go menu → Click on Downloads.
Step #2. Select the file(s) you want to get rid of. Right-click (or control-click) on the file and select Move to Trash.
Best Cleanup Tool For Mac
Just in case you wish to save some files, move them to Dropbox or transfer them to the external drive. Else, don’t forget to empty trash. To do so, right click on bin icon, click on Empty Trash and confirm.
Best Tool For Cleaning Up Other Mac Storage Other
Use Third-Party Software to Help You Clean Up Your Mac More Conveniently
There are several third-party software like DaisyDisk ($9.99), Onyx, CleanMac 3 ($39.99) that can be immensely helpful in letting you easily clear off cache files on your computer.
Best Tool For Cleaning Up Other Mac Storage Other
Have any feedback?
So, did you try clearing up some space on your Mac? What is the size of “Other” storage space after you followed the steps above to free up disk space? Have something to say? Comments are open!
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