Storage platforms allow us to always have all the information we need at hand from anywhere. Once you get used to using them, you don't think twice about the storage capacity of your next Mac and, unless you work editing video, you always opt for the one with the smallest capacity.
However, despite the fact that storage platforms have been around for many years, there are still many users who do not take advantage of them or do not see the functionality they offer. If so, surely, on more than one occasion, you will have been forced to free up space on your Mac.
Move content you don't use
The first thing we must do to free up space on our hard drive is use an external storage drive to move all the content that we don't usually need.
Unless you usually work editing videos, or need to always have your photos at hand, this solution will help you free up a lot of space.
If you don't want to go from here to there with a storage unit, at the risk of losing it, you can opt for hire cloud storage space. The platform that offers us the best integration is obviously iCloud. However, it is not the only option.
OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox... are interesting alternatives that are seamlessly integrate with macOS through the application available for this ecosystem.
Also, these apps work just like iCloud, so they only download the files that we open on the Mac, keeping the rest in the cloud.
Check how much the system occupies
Once we have eliminated the content that occupies the most space on our device, it is time to take a look at our system. Over time, as we install and remove applications, the size of the macOS system is growingsometimes disproportionately.
Some time ago, I saw the need to clean my computer after checking how my Mac system size was 140GB (as you can see in the image above).
After cleaning, reduced system size down to 20GB, which, although still excessive, is much less space. The options that Apple offers us to free up storage space on a Mac are non-existent.
In order to check and thus eliminate the space occupied by the system section of our computer, we can use the applications Disk Inventory or Daisydisk.
These are not the only two applications that allow us to remove space occupied by the macOS system. I personally recommend both apps because I have had the opportunity to test them and verify their operation.
Disk Inventory
We start by talking about Disk Inventory X, a free application with a very unfriendly interface. The first time we run the application, it will analyze our computer and show us, organized by directories, the space that each one occupies.
From the application itself, we can delete all the content that we consider expendable, such as the data of the applications that we have deleted, and that, for macOS, are part of the system.
It is not necessary to have advanced knowledge, but it is advisable to know how files and directories work. To prevent less experienced users from being able to delete system files, this option is not available in the app.
You can download Disk Inventory X app for free through the following link. The app requires macOS 10.13 and up.
Daisydisk
If you are not clear with the interface of Disk Inventory X, you can try DaisyDisk. The DaisyDisk interface it is much more friendly than the one offered by Disk Inventory X, so it is ideal for those who have less knowledge.
daisy disc, offers us an interface in the form of circles, showing, in different colors, the directories where the information is stored, along with the space they occupy.
Like Disk Inventory X, it also allows us to access the directories and delete the content of applications that we no longer use.
This application, does not allow us to delete system files, so it can be used by people with little computer knowledge.
Daisydisk is priced at $ 9,99. But, before buying it, we can test the application completely free of charge through its web page.
Delete apps
Apps are the least of our worries, since they hardly take up space on our hard drive compared to the space taken up by media files.
However, if you are the type of user who installs any application he knows with the sole pretext of seeing what the space occupied by the applications offers over time it can be worrying.
macOS puts at our disposal several different methods to delete apps that we no longer use or simply want to delete to get rid of them.
However, with a single method, we can delete both the applications that we have installed from the Mac App Store or like the ones we have downloaded from the internet.
The fastest and easiest method to remove applications from our Mac is toAccess Finder and drag the application you want to delete to the recycle bin.
This method allows us select multiple apps and delete them altogether by dragging them to the trash can.
Other options
If you can't free up space on your computer, because you need all the applications you have installed and you can't do without the multimedia content you have stored, the only solution left to us is expand the storage space of our equipment.
Unfortunately, with each new generation of Mac, Apple makes things more complicated when it comes to expanding both the RAM memory and the storage unit. Unless you have an old device, you won't be able to expand your device's storage space.
If you're planning to upgrade your old Mac, you should keep in mind, the space you are going to need to be able to work without space problems, or use an external storage unit to be able to expand (in that way) the available storage space or use a cloud storage platform.