• How To Free Up Storage On Mac Disk
• How To Free Up Storage On Macbook Pro
• How To Free Up Storage On Mac System
• How To Free Up Storage On Mac Laptop
• How To Free Up Storage On Mac Computer

Store the contents of the device to the iCloud storage. This is a safe and secure place for. Apr 05, 2021 Digging deeper to free up Mac storage Daisy Disk. While using Finder and About This Mac are helpful, my favorite approach to tidying things up is with the visual drive analyzer Daisy Disk ($9.99. You may want to compress your files because compressed files take up less storage space. Here is how you can locate large files so you can compress: Select Finder Go Home File Find then open the Kind menu, then select Other. Now check the checkbox for File Size. Now enter a file size (e.g. 50MB) and find items that are larger than 50MB.

Is your Mac dangerously close to running out of storage? Usually, you can go on a short disk cleaning spree and free up a lot of space quickly. But sometimes, it’s just not that simple.

A while back, we talked about the somewhat baffling “Other” storage that can end up consuming tens—if not hundreds—of gigabytes of disk space. This time, we shall focus on another perplexing issue: how to reduce a bloated “System” storage on the Mac.

What Is System Storage?

Whenever you go to Applemenu > About This Mac > Storage, the Mac’s internal storage indicator will display the amount of data related to the operating system as “System” storage.

Ideally, it should stay under 20 gigabytes, but you can expect it to keep growing slowly as you keep using your Mac. If it exceeds that by double or triple-digits, however, then here are the most common reasons why that happens:

• Local Time Machine snapshots.
• Large application log files.
• Bloated application or system cache.
• Broken Spotlight Search index.

If your Mac has a very large “System” storage allocation, the pointers that follow should you help reduce it. Don’t forget to clear the Trash and check the Storage screen frequently as you work your way through them.

Remove Local Time Machine Snapshots

If you have Time Machine enabled on your Mac, you may end up with a chunk of “System” storage well beyond the usual size limits. That happens when the operating system fails to clear older Time Machine snapshots from the internal storage. It’s best to check and get rid of them using Terminal.

Note: If possible, create a fresh Time Machine backup with your external backup drive connected before you go ahead.

1. Go to Finder > Applications > Utilities and open Terminal.

2. Type tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates and press Enter to bring up a list of all local Time Machine snapshots along with their relevant date tags.

3. You must delete the local Time Machine snapshots individually (starting with the oldest) and check if that reduces “System” within your Mac’s Storage screen.

Type tmutil deletelocalsnapshots followed by the date and name of the snapshot. Then, press Enter to delete it.

Repeat as needed, but avoid deleting the most recent snapshots. If you have your external backup drive around, however, you can safely delete all of them with the following command:

for snapshot in $(tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates | grep -v :); do sudo tmutil deletelocalsnapshots $snapshot; done

Delete Application Log Files

If you’ve used your Mac for some time, it may contain lots of application log files. In some cases, these files can end up consuming multiple gigabytes of storage. You can check and delete them by heading over to the Logs folder within the Mac’s user library.

1. Open Finder. Then, select Go > Go to Folder.

2. Type ~/Library/Logs/ and press Enter.

3. Check for any oversized log files and delete them. To make things easier, you can switch to List view (from the top of the Finder window) and use the Size column to sort the log files by size.

Delete Connection Log Files

Application logs aside, your Mac may also contain massive connection log files related to the Mail app. It’s best to check and get rid of them.

1. Open Finder. Then, select Go > Go to Folder.

2. Type the following folder path and press Enter:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Logs/Mail

3. Delete any large connection log files inside the directory.

Delete System and Application Cache

Both the operating system and the various applications that run on your Mac frequently cache lots of files. That helps speed things up, but sometimes, the application and the system caches can balloon out of control and ramp up the “System” reading. Try clearing out any large file caches.

Tip: For a complete walkthrough, check how to clear the Mac cache.

1. Open Finder. Then, select Go > Go to Folder.

2. Type ~/Library/Caches/ and press Enter to open the application cache.

3. Switch to List view and sort the files and folders using the Size column. Then, delete any oversized items within the directory.

Note: If Finder doesn’t display folder sizes in List view, open View on the menu bar, select Show View Options, check the box next to Calculate all sizes, and select Use as Defaults.

4. Restart your Mac. If everything looks good, clear the Trash.

5. Repeat steps 1–4, but use the path /Library/Caches/ (which opens the system cache) in step 2 instead.

Enter/Exit Safe Mode

Booting into Safe Mode can help remove redundant or obsolete system-related files on your Mac. To do that, start by turning off your Mac. Power it back on, but immediately press and hold the Shift key until you see the Apple logo.

After your Mac boots into Safe Mode, go to Apple menu > About This Mac > Storage. Wait for a couple of minutes until the storage indicator updates itself completely. Then, restart your Mac normally and see if that helped.

Rebuild Spotlight Index

Sometimes, your Mac may display an incorrect “System” storage reading due to a broken Spotlight Search index. Try rebuilding it to help reduce system storage on Mac.

1. Open the Apple menu, choose System Preferences, and select Spotlight.

2. Switch to the Privacy tab. Then, drag and drop the system drive from your desktop inside it.

Note: If the system drive is not visible on the desktop, open Finder, and select Preferences on the Finder menu. Then, check the box next to Hard disks.

3. Select OK to confirm that you want Spotlight Search to stop searching the system drive.

4. Wait for a moment. Then, select the system drive that you just added and remove it using the Delete ( — ) button.

How To Free Up Storage On Mac Disk

That should prompt Spotlight Search to re-index the system drive.

Too Complicated? Use Onyx

If the methods above to reduce system storage on your Mac seem too tedious, try using Onyx. It’s a completely free application that can quickly delete local Time Machine snapshots, remove outdated log files, clear the application and system caches, and rebuild the Spotlight index.

Onyx also works as a junk removal tool. If you keep running into storage-related issues on your Mac regularly, we highly recommend that you use it. Here’s a complete Onyx walkthrough.

/PowerMyMac /How to Clear System Storage on Mac Effectively

By this time, you might have been experiencing that you are a sort of running out of system storage on your Mac and you may be looking for ways on how to clear system storage on Mac. And one of the first thing that you would do is to check out your disk space for you to see what are the things that are eating up your Mac's system storage.

And once that you view system storage on Mac, you will then be surprised to see a yellow bar that refers to your System which is like occupying more of your space on your Mac, including so many purgeable files to delete. And the worst case is that you actually have no idea what are the things that are included in your system storage.

TIPS:

That is why in this post, we are going to show you how to clear system storage on Mac and what are the things that contain your system storage on your Mac so that you will have better knowledge on what are the things that you should be removed from your Mac.

Article GuidePart 1. What Dose System Storage Mean on Mac?Part 2. How Do I Free up System Storage on My Mac Automatically?Part 3. How to Clear System Storage on Mac Manually?Part 4. In Conclusion

Part 1. What Dose System Storage Mean on Mac?

What Is System Storage on Mac?

The files that actually your system storage of your Mac contains are all of those junks that you actually do not need on your Mac. This can be your System Cache, Application Cache, System Logs, User Logs, and more.

Why Is My Mac System Storage So Big?

Why is there so much system storage on my Mac? These files are stored on your Mac every time that you are making a download, or saving new files on your Mac. This can be your email attachments, iTunes movie, and more. Some of these files are saving large files that is why it can take up your system storage quickly.

Furthermore, Your 'System' and 'Library' folders are the main storage locations. Therefore, if your 'system' takes up a lot of space, Time Machine snapshots are most likely stored on your Mac.

Now you know what is system storage, but how to clear system storage on Mac so that you can free up more space to save other files you desired? macOS comes with a feature to optimize your storage: turn to “About this Mac” > choose Storage > click Manage button, then you will see Store in iCloud, Optimize Storage, Empty Trash Automatically, and Reduce Clutter. You can make use of these options to reduce the system storage on your Mac first.

Part 2. How Do I Free up System Storage on My Mac Automatically?

There are methods to clean Mac system storage manually we will talk about in the next part, but they surely take more time and effort as you will be needing to go through your Mac one by one.

However, there is a better way for you to free up system storage Mac. You will be able to clear your Mac’s system storage in no time.

All the methods on how to clear system storage on Mac that we have included in the next part can all be done just by one program – the iMyMac PowerMyMac. This program is considered to be a Mac system storage cleanup tool that you can use to reduce system storage on Mac by removing all junk files.

Using the PowerMyMac will allow you to choose all the junks or files that you no longer need on your Mac and clean them. You can decide what to remove or not, so you will be assured that none of your important files will be deleted without you knowing it. Then how to get rid of system storage on Mac with PowerMyMac?

Here is how to clear system storage on Mac with PowerMyMac.

1. Download and install PowerMyMac on your Mac, then launch it.
2. Launch the iMyMac Program
3. Select the Master Scan module to clear your Mac’s system storage by deleting System Cache, Application Cache, System Logs, User Logs, etc.
4. After scanning, mark all the files that you would want to clean and click on the “Clean” button.

So there you have the easy way on how to clear system storage on Mac with just a few clicks using PowerMyMac. You can also try the other options that the program has to clean up other things like duplicate photos on your Mac. This will then boost the performance of your Mac and at the same time, you will be able to gain more of your system storage back.

Part 3. How to Clear System Storage on Mac Manually?

Method #1. Delete Time Machine Backups

Not only will Time Machine backups be stored on an external drive, but macOS will also keep a backup copy on your startup drive so that you can restore files when the external drive is unavailable. You may need to delete your Time Machine backups when your Mac is run out of system storage. Check the steps below:

1. Launch Terminal and type this command: tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates
2. Press the Return button then you will see a list of Time Machine backups listed by date.
3. Type the command: tmutil deletelocalsnapshots NAME (NAME is the name of one of the listed backups).
4. Press the Return button again.
5. You can repeat step 3 and step 4 to remove those backups you'd like to clear out.

Method #2. 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 know how to delete system storage on Mac, go ahead and clean up your Mac’s cache:

How To Free Up Storage On Macbook Pro

1. Launch Finder on your Mac.
2. Then go ahead and click on “Go to folder”.
3. From there, go ahead and type in ~/Library/Caches then remove all the files that are taking up most space.
4. After that, go ahead and click on “Go to folder”.
5. Then type in /Library/Cache and then once more, go ahead and remove all the files that are taking up most space.

Method #3. Remove Your Old iTunes Library Backups

Whenever you make a backup on your iTunes, the more backup file is stored on your Mac. And with that, these backups that you no longer use will be piled up on your Mac and this can cause your system storage to get full as well.

So, for you to remove system storage on Mac, go ahead and remove all those old iTunes Backup that you no longer need:

1. Go ahead and launch Finder on your Mac.
2. Then go ahead and click on the “Go” button located at the menu bar.
3. Then choose “Go to Folder”.
4. Then go ahead and enter the following: ~/Music/iTunes/Previous iTunes Libraries
5. Once done, you will be able to see all of your iTunes back-ups. The date they were made is also indicated so you can go ahead and choose your old backups and delete them.

Method #4. Take Out All Unused Applications

How To Free Up Storage On Mac System

This method is one of the most common ways on how to clear system storage on Mac. All you have to do is to go through all of the applications that you have on your Mac and sort out which are the ones that you no longer use and uninstall them. You just have to make sure that you are removing them correctly and not just by merely dragging them over to your Trash bin.

You have to make sure that when you uninstall any application on your Mac that you no longer need, you should also find all the files or folders that are associated with that application. If not, then you are still leaving data behind and that will still eat up space on your Mac.

Method #5. Clean Up Your Photo Library

Photos are one of the most common data that we have on our Mac. And keeping them is keeping memories. However, these photos actually take up more space on your Mac’s system storage. So you have to make sure that you sort things out.

So how to clear space on Mac system? You can delete all the photos that you think you no longer need and as well as those photos that have more than one copy. You also have the option to transfer them over to another hard drive or USB drive for you to free up space on your Mac.

Method #6. Delete Any Old iOS Backup

Just like your iTunes backup, the old iOS backup that you have on your Mac is also one of the reasons as to why your Mac’s system storage is getting full. That is why it is a good idea that you should also remove your old iOS backup from your Mac. Let's check the steps on how to clear system storage on Mac below:

1. Go ahead and launch Finder on your Mac.
2. After that, go ahead and click on the “Go” button located at the menu bar.
3. From there, go ahead and choose “Go to folder”.
4. Then once that you are in, go ahead and type the following: ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup

Once that you have opened the window, go ahead and choose all the old iOS backup that you have on your Mac. Dates of the backup are already indicated so that you will be able to know which of them are the old ones.

Part 4. In Conclusion

As you can see, it is an easy thing to do on how to clear system storage on Mac. Though doing this manually will take more time and effort. But all thanks to the PowerMyMac, you will be saving more of your time and effort as it will only need a few clicks to do the cleaning process and optimize system storage.

Make it a habit of cleaning up your Mac every now and then so that you will not be able to experience having full storage and a slow Mac. Remember, cleaning up all the files and other things that you no longer need will sure be a great help for the performance of your Mac.

Last Tip: If you want to reduce the “system” storage size on your iPhone or iPad, just turn to the provided link to check how to free up system storage on iPhone.

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