How to free up hard drive space on your Mac

See what takes up space and delete old files.

The larger the files you can delete, the more space you have to free up, so go hunting. Click the Apple menu in the top-left corner of the menu bar and select About This Mac.

If that overview says you’re running macOS 10.12 Sierra or later, you can click the Storage tab to get a basic idea of ​​what’s taking up too much space on your drive like documents, photos, music, etc. For example, if you find out you have 100GB of music on your 128GB drive, it’s a fair bet you should clean up that iTunes library.

Click the Manage button, and you will have the option to see a much more detailed analysis. The left sidebar shows you each of the categories mentioned above, and you can click on them to see the largest files of that type. For example, you might find that you have gigabytes of video from an old project you no longer need or huge iOS backups from devices you no longer own.
Right, click on any of these files to delete them, and you should be able to free up a decent amount of space. (Don’t forget to empty the Trash when you’re done—if the files are in the Trash, they’re still taking up space on your Mac!)

If you don’t have macOS Sierra or you want to dig deeper into your system, you can do similar things with a tool like Disk Inventory X. It may not be a disk space analyzer. It’s best for macOS, but it’s free and offers a complete list of the folders, files, and file types using your hard drive.
Move files to the cloud.

You can click Suggestions in the upper right corner from the same Manage Storage window mentioned above to run a few actions that can help free up space. For example, macOS can automatically delete iTunes movies and shows you’ve watched (while still being able to re-download it for later viewing).

You can also choose to store documents, photos, and messages in iCloud instead of on your computer. However, you will likely need to purchase iCloud storage for this feature to be useful.

If you use another cloud sync service, like Dropbox, open its settings and make sure you only sync the folders you need. If you have large files in the cloud that you don’t often access on this machine, you probably only have them there for backup purposes. You can uncheck those folders in the cloud storage app’s settings so they won’t sync with your Mac. They will still be available from Dropbox.com if you need them, but they won’t take up space on your computer.
Find and delete duplicate files.

When you investigate your drive, you may find that you have two or even three of some files. Maybe you accidentally downloaded a file twice, or maybe you added music to iTunes, but those songs also exist in their original locations. Deleting these duplicates can help free up space, especially if there are a lot of them.

The best way to find duplicate files is with a third-party app like Gemini 2. It’s quite expensive for a full license, but the free trial is all you need for a duplicate search for quick duplicates just run the scan and click the drop-down arrow next to each result to see which files are duplicates that you can delete.

The paid version cleans up those files automatically, while the free version takes you through it step-by-step. Anyway, we recommend using the latter, so you don’t accidentally delete what you need.
Clear cache and other temporary files

Your computer keeps a set of temporary files on your hard drive so it can access them again later. Many people clear these caches from time to time to free up space, but unlike the tricks above, deleting temporary files only helps you temporarily.

Those caches fill up as soon as you keep using your computer, so it’s only worth it if you’re extremely short on space and need to wait a few days while you finish that big project or wait for a greater difficulty driving in the mail.

CCleaner is a free program that will scan your system for temporary internet files, system logs, and other unnecessary files. Install the app, open it up and click the Analyze button in the bottom right corner. It will show you a list of removable files, and you can click Run Cleaner to remove them.

If you want something more thorough, CleanMyMac X can find even more deletable files on my system, but it costs $35 for a one-year license.
If all else fails, get an external drive.

After going through all the steps above, if you’re still low on space, it might be time to bite the bullet and upgrade your storage. You can upgrade the internal drive on some older Macs, but most modern Apple products solder the storage onto the motherboard. Therefore, you are forced to buy a new Mac if you want more internal storage. (Google your specific model of Mac and see what your options are.)

If you can’t upgrade the internal storage, hope isn’t lost: you can still get an external drive instead and offload some of your less-used files to it. Check out our list of the best external hard drives and those that work well with Mac to see what’s available.