How To Make Room On Your Mac

After the release of Sierra, optimizing storage has been easier with an inbuilt feature. Optimized Storage is a tool which helps you see what’s taking up space on mac. It finds and removes unwanted large files from your Mac. However, it moves all this content in the cloud.

For best results, make sure your network drive (or shared computer) uses a wired connection to your router and, if possible, to your MacBook, too. You can buy a bare-bones NAS drive, like the Netgear ReadyNAS RN422, and then purchase hard drives separately, or you can opt for a ready-to-go solution, like the Western Digital My Cloud EX2.

Backup the Mac computer with Time Machine 2. Check the available storage space on your Mac to ensure at least 30 GB available storage. Otherwise, you will need to remove some content from your Mac to clean up the storage space. If your Mac acts like it needs a nap every afternoon, when you are at the height of multitasking, there is an easy way to see which of your open applications is using the most system resources.

The files moved stays right where you saved them and gets downloaded when you want to access them. But is it really what you want? What if you don’t want to move your content to iCloud? What if don’t want to buy space on iCloud?

Then, it leaves you to either scour and delete unwanted large files manually or get a third-party application such as Smart Mac Care.

In this post, we have listed both the ways for you to find out what’s taking up so much space on your Mac.

How To See What’s Taking Space On Mac Manually?

To start, go to Apple menu, Click About This Mac->Storage. You will get to view the space used on Mac in different categories such as photos, videos, docs, apps and Other.

Once you have reviewed, click Manage to get recommendations to optimize your mac storage.

Note: Manage button is only available in Sierra and higher versions.

These recommendations will help you sort your storage space. You can turn on or use the features to manually retrieve space on Mac. However, you need to review all the things that you need to delete and sort the clutter on your own, which takes a lot of time and efforts. Also, this process is not error-free.

If you don’t have a newer version of Mac, you need to follow these steps:

  • Move big files to an external drive.
  • Delete files from trash
  • Compress large files
  • Locate and delete unwanted files from your Mail, documents folder, downloads folder and more.

This can be exhausting. If you want to save your time and efforts, you should go for a third-party application such as Smart Mac Care to optimize your Mac. Let us know how it could help you to know what’s taking up space on Mac.

Smart Mac Care

Smart Mac Care is a one-stop solution which can not only optimize your Mac but also secures it from malicious content, privacy traces, and unwanted junk files. You can see what’s taking space on your Mac with the software’s inbuilt feature Disk Usage. It lists bulkiest files, be it videos, photos, music, documents or other files on the computer, allowing you to sort the unwanted ones. This keeps your Mac optimized and secure with minimal efforts.

Well, this is not it! Smart Mac Care comes with advanced features on a simple interface, let’s explore apart from helping to optimize disk space, what more it has to offer:

  • Protects Mac From Malicious Content:

With the prevalence of malware, adware, and other malicious content, your computer might suffer and could crash if not secured. That’s where Smart Mac Care helps you. It scans and deletes threats present on your Mac.

  • Deletes Junk & Unwanted Files

How To Make Room On Your Macbook Air

Over time, your Mac might accumulate junk, log files along with other residual items. When these files grow in number, it takes a lot of space on your computer. Smart Mac Care can detect log files, cache files, trash and enables you to delete them. This recovers invaluable space on your Mac.

  • Removes Privacy Traces

Your browsing history can be hacked through history, cookies, and app cache. Smart Mac Care cleans and removes all the privacy traces to make sure your privacy stays intact.

  • Uninstaller

With its Uninstaller, Smart Mac Care gives you an option to easily uninstall applications along with files associated to it. Uninstall unwanted apps and free up space on your Mac.

  • Duplicate Finder

If you are worried to sort your files and remove duplicates from it, Smart Mac Care can do that for you. No matter whether it is an image, folder, video or document, you can manage and organize them nicely and saves tons of GBS in the process.

  • Spots Failed Downloads

With Failed Downloads, you can get rid of any and every corrupt and incomplete download to retrieve your hard disk space.

  • Enable/Disable Login Items

Now you can control the apps that launch when your Mac starts up. With Login items, you can remove unwanted apps from login items list to improve boot time.

  • Optimizes Memory

With Memory Optimizer, Smart Mac Care shows memory available on Mac. Here you can see used memory within Apps, Wired or Compressed Memory. Click Optimize Now to organize.

  • Info On Redundant Data

System tab tells you about redundant data from iOS updates, iTunes, backups, downloads. You can get rid of them to free up space on Mac.

  • Flash Cache

Flash Cache is a feature which shows you the list of flash videos, which could store cache data to get better browsing speed.

So, these are some of the features that make Smart Mac Care, a unique and complete solution that you can use to optimize and secure your Mac. It not only allows you to see what’s taking up space on Mac but also enables you to orgnize the disk space smoothly.

What do you think? Which would be your choice when it comes to finding out what’s taking up space on my Mac: A cumbersome task of sorting files manually or gently sifting through files using Smart Mac Care? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.

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How to Speed Up Mac? This post lists 11 methods to speed up your Mac and make it work like new.

Mac Tips & Issue Fixes

Mac Related Tips
Mac Problems & Fixes
Mac Clean Tips

You might have the habit of wiping and dusting off your Mac screen and cleaning out keyboard and indeed, physical cleaning could make your Mac look sleek and shine as new. However, is your Mac computer working like new?

I believe the answer is a big NO. Even if you spent more than $ 2000 on one of the best Mac computers, it is still inevitable that your Mac might get slow and sluggish, even stuck on some window. How to speed up Mac? If you are troubled by this problem, don’t worry, we are here to help. Here in this post, we summarized the most efficient 11 tips to help you speed up your Mac and make it work like new.

Method 1. Make Sure Your Mac OS Is Up to Date

Apple provides free OS updates and these updates could fix bugs and glitches that slowing down your Mac. There is no reason to stay at old version of Mac OS at all! Below are detailed steps of how to update to latest Mac OS.

Step 1. Locate the version of Mac you require, check if your Mac is supported and if there is enough room for your Mac.

Step 2. Backup your Mac.

Step 3. Click on the App Store icon in the Dock and select Updates. You can also click the Apple logo at the top left of your screen and select Software Update from there. (Please make sure you have logged in iCloud account on your Mac.)

Step 4. Search Mac OS, download it to your Mac. Follow the prompts, you can have the newest version of Mac OS.

Method 2. Cleanup Your Browser like Safari, Chrome, Opera, etc.

No matter what browser you are using on your Mac, Safari, Chrome or Opera, when you are browsing some webs, the more tabs you open on your browser, the more memory storage it takes up, and more slowly your computer works. If don’t believe it, you can launch Activity Monitor (Steps: Macintosh HD > Applications > Folder of Utilities > Activity Monitor) to check it.

Close Unused Tabs in Safari/Firefox/Chrome/Opera to Speed Up Mac

  1. Close unused tabs in your browser.
  2. Cleanup the cookies, caches and browsing history from your browser:

For Safari users: Click Safari on left hand of desktop > Clear History and Website Data > All History > Clear History.

For Chrome users: Click Chrome on left hand of desktop > Clear Browsing Data > the beginning of time > Select the items you want to clear > Clear browsing data.

For Firefox Users: Launch Firefox > Click History on the upper left corner of your desktop > Select the history you want to remove > Click Setting > Select Delete button.

For Opera Users: Click Opera at the left hand of your desktop > Click Clear Private Data > Select the browsing data you want to delete > Click Clear Browsing Data.

Also Read: How to Free up Space on Mac >

When you clearing browsing history and cookies from some browser, you can choose to keep the password, or you will input them again when you visit the webpages you logged in before.

Method 3. Remove All Junks from Your Mac

If you want to speed up your Mac completely, it is quite necessary to find out and remove the junk files from it. Don’t think it is troublesome to open every app to clear its junks? Here we offer you an all-in-one Mac cleaning tool – MacClean that allows you to one click to remove System Junks, App junks, Users Junks, and Internet Junks from your Mac without Googling how to figure out some tough problems, how to delete history and caches from Firefox browser, how to get rid of app leftovers from Mac, etc.

How To Make Room On Your Mac

Related Reading:

Method 4. Cleanup Your Desktop

Cleanup Your Desktop to Speed Up Your Mac

Contrary to Windows computer, Mac has only one hard disk, and we put all the things in the same disk. We never worry we will run out of all the storage of C drive, and never thought they will slow down our Mac. However, if you just keep your files disordered on your desktop, and keep all apps on the dock, the items on your desktop also will slow down your Mac. Because macOS treat each desktop item like a small window with its own performance boost, and your desktop plays a part in how many time it will take for you to boost the system (it is the first screen that it has to load up).

Therefore, here are several ways to clean up your desktop:

– Remove unused Apps from Dock: Select the App > Right click this App > Select Options > Remove from Dock.

When removing some App from Dock, you should quit it firstly, or you can’t find the option of “Remove from Dock”.

– Delete unless files, and put valuable files into folders.

– Remove Apps from Computer. Apps take up both CPU and storage.

Also Read: How to Clean MacBook Pro Hard Drive Easily >

Method 5. Empty the Trash

You know that every file you delete and every App you uninstall are placed in Trash unless you right click and empty it. So if you ensure all your deleted files are useless, empty trash regularly and remove them from your Mac permanently.

Make More Room On Computer

How To Make Room On Your Mac

Method 6. Close Unused but Running in Background Applications

When looking at Activity Monitory, except browser tabs take much storage, you must have noticed that some apps you don’t launch are running in the background. So close those unused apps to speed up your Mac.

Close Unused Apps with Activity Monitory to Speed Your Mac

Method 7. Close Widgets on the Dashboard You Don’t Use

Like Apps and browser tabs, the widgets on your Dashboard also take up a little bit of memory. So go to Dashboard and remove the widgets you don’t use by following the steps: Launchpad > Mission Control > Dashboard > Click “-” > Click the “x” of the widgets you don’t use. Absolutely, you also can use the same way to add the widgets you delete by mistake.

Remove Unused Widgets from Dashboard to Speed Up Mac

Method 8. Managing Startup Items

If you find it takes you one or two minutes to boot up your Mac, maybe you should check your login items on your Mac, and there have too many applications to open. When you install some applications, they automatically are added into Login Items, and they will launch automatically when you start your Mac. Without a doubt, this will make your Mac slowly. If you don’t know what Apps are added in your Login Items, you can check with steps below: Settings > Users & Groups > Current User > Login Items > Select the items you want to remove > Click “-” button.

Method 9. Add RAM or Upgrade the Hardware

If you have tried all the methods listed above, but your Mac still works slowly. At this moment, you can consider upgrading the RAM to speed up your Mac. As known to us, Mac computer is very expensive. Compared with getting a new Mac, upgrading your RAM is the simplest way to make your Mac run faster. If you have only one piece of RAM attached in your Mac, consider getting another one.

How To Make Mac Salad

Add RAM or Upgrade Hardware to Speed Up Mac

Method 10. Add an SSD to Mac

SSD stands for “Solid State Drive”, and an SSD drive is just the same shape and size as a traditional drive. The biggest difference between them is that an SSD drive uses RAM chips instead of a spinning hard disk to store information, which makes it much faster.

We suggest you add an SSD drive to run just macOS and your applications, and keep your existing hard disk for your user files. This means your System files and Applications are on the new SSD drive, but your user data like iPhoto or iTunes stay on your old Hard Disk. This will speed up your boot time and application launching.

Also Read: How to Clean MacBook Pro >

Method 11. Restart Your Mac

For most of us, especially those who are working with a MacBook Pro or Air, we won’t restart our Mac unless we meet some problem and can’t solve it. Normally we just close the lid and let it sleep. However, restarting your Mac will clear out the cache and re-initializes hardware, and rebooting regularly can have performance benefits. Moreover, nowadays the Macs equipped with SSD drivers can boost as quickly as they awake from Sleep. Therefore, if your Mac works slowly, you can restart your Mac and see if it is faster.

We also strongly suggest you make more available room for your Mac computer, especially when you are working a 64 GB or 128 GB MacBook Air. To get the most useful tips to free up space on Mac, you can refer to 4 Methods to Free up Space on Your Mac >

In addition, as every MacBook user, you also want your MacBook battery life to be good in condition because the battery of MacBook is integrated battery, which means it’s not easy to remove and install for general users. Also, the price of battery replacement is expensive. That’s why we bring you – Best Tips to Improve MacBook Battery Life >

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