If you need to clear off space from your Mac's hard drive, there are some places you should look first. You may have some old iPhone backups, installers, or other downloaded files. You can easily see which apps and files take up the most space and get rid of things you no longer need. Aug 02, 2019 Later versions of Mac OS X come bundled with several nifty apps. GarageBand is among them. This is a digital audio workstation that gives Mac users the ability to record and edit music and podcasts. It is compatible with MIDI keyboards and other instruments, and can also use loops stored on your Mac.
- Do Old Versions Of Apps Take Up Space On Mac Windows 10
- Do Old Versions Of Apps Take Up Space On Mac Download
- Do Old Versions Of Apps Take Up Space On Mac Computer
So, your Mac is running out of storage. You try to figure out what’s taking up your disk space by clicking the Apple logo on the top-left of the screen, selecting About This Mac, and hitting the Storage tab.
To your surprise, you see a yellow bar representing “System” that seems to occupy way more space than you think it should. In the example above, it only shows 207 GB, but take a look at this Apple discussion — some Mac users report that System Storage takes an astonishing 250 GB.
Worse yet, you have no idea what’s included in “System” storage, because clicking the “Manage” button brings you to this System Information window… and the “System” row is greyed out.
Why does my Mac system require so much space?
What does it contain?
Is it safe to remove some of those system files?
How do I regain more storage space?
Questions like these may easily get to your head. Although my Mac now has a good amount of disk space available, I’m always wary of files that are taking up more space than they should.
I have no idea why “System” is greyed out while “Documents,” “System Junk,” “Trash,” etc. allow you to review the files based on size and type. My hunch is that Apple does this on purpose to prevent users from deleting system files that could lead to serious issues.
What Files Are Included in System Storage on Mac?
During my research, I found many people report that Apple counts iTunes backup files and app caches (e.g. Adobe video cache files) in the System category.
Since it’s greyed out and we are unable to click on that category for deeper analysis, we’ll have to use a third-party app to assist.
CleanMyMac X is perfect for this kind of analysis. Since I tested the app in our best Mac cleaner review, it immediately came to my head when I saw “System” was greyed out in Storage. Best free pdf editor app for mac. Note that CleanMyMac isn’t freeware, but the new “Space Lens” feature is free to use and it allows you to scan your Macintosh HD, and then show you an in-depth overview of what’s taking up disk space on your Mac.
Step 1:Download CleanMyMac and install the app on your Mac. Open it, under “Space Lens” module, first click the yellow “Grant Access” button to allow the app to access your Mac files and then select “Scan” to get started.
Step 2: Soon it’ll show you a folder/file tree and you can hover your cursor over each block (i.e. a folder). There you can find more details. In this case, I clicked “System” folder to continue.
App to download youtube videos to iphone. Step 3: The file breakdown below indicates that some Library and iOS Support files are the culprits.
The interesting part is that the System file size shown in CleanMyMac is much smaller than the size shown in System Information. This puzzles me and makes me believe that Apple definitely has counted some other files (not real system files) in the System category.
What are they? I have no clue, honestly. But as reported by other Mac users who experienced the same issue, they said Apple also considers app caches and iTunes backup files as System files.
Out of curiosity, I ran CleanMyMac again for a quick scan. That app found 13.92 GB in iTunes Junk. Further review revealed that the junk files are old iOS device backups, software updates, broken downloads, etc.
But even after adding this amount to the original system files returned by CleanMyMac X, the total size is still a bit less than what’s returned in System Information.
If cleaning the System Storage is still not enough to bring your Mac available disk space to a normal level (i.e. 20% or more), see below.
What Else Can I Do to Reclaim More Disk Space?
There are tons of ways out there. Here are a few of my favorites that should help you get back a decent amount of space quickly.
1. Sort all files by size and delete old large files.
Mac os x disable software update notifications. Open Finder, go to Recents and look at the Size column. Click on it to sort all recent files by file size (from large to small). You’ll have a clear overview of what items are eating up a large amount of space, e.g. From 1 GB to 10 GB, and from 100 MB to 1 GB.
On my MacBook Pro, I found a few large videos that could be transferred to an external drive.
Note: If the Size column doesn’t show up, click on the Settings icon and select Arrange By > Size.
2. Remove duplicate files.
Don’t forget those duplicates and similar files! They can stack up without you being aware of it. Finding them is sometimes time-consuming. That’s what Gemini 2 is designed for. Simply select a few frequently used folders (e.g. Documents, Downloads, etc.) in the main zone of Gemini.
It then scans them and returns all the duplicate files that might be worth removing. Of course, it’s always a good practice to review them before doing so. You can also read more from our detailed Gemini review here.
Wrapping It Up
![Space Space](/uploads/1/2/6/4/126486166/515181846.jpg)
Ever since Apple introduced the Optimized Storage feature, Mac users got the option of saving space by storing content in the cloud. Apple also has several new tools that make it easy to find and remove unneeded files.
That bar under the Storage tab is beautiful. It does allow you to get a quick overview of what’s taking up the most space on our hard drive. However, it still lacks insights into the “System” category as it’s greyed out.
Hopefully, the guides above have helped you figure out the reasons you’ve got so much “System” data, and most importantly you’ve reclaimed some disk space — especially for new MacBooks pre-installed with flash storage — every gigabyte is precious!
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.
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
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
Do Old Versions Of Apps Take Up Space On Mac Windows 10
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.
Do Old Versions Of Apps Take Up Space On Mac Download
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.
Do Old Versions Of Apps Take Up Space On Mac Computer
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