What is other on mac hard drive space how to#
What is other on mac hard drive space install#
What is other on mac hard drive space Pc#
What is other on mac hard drive space free#

What is other on mac hard drive space free#

In APFS, every disk is a container that can hold multiple volumes and shares the same pool of free space.

As a result, it may show the System category taking a lot of space.

But neither Finder or About This Mac shows the space taken by snapshots. At first the storage bar estimates the amount of used and available storage space. When Time Machine creates local snapshots, the file system is aware of the changes. From the Apple menu in the corner of your screen, choose About This Mac.

The APFS snapshot feature works differently.

Finder does not understand this mechanism and wrongly estimates free and used disk space. Instead of duplicating the data, it updates the metadata, and the on-disk data gets shared.

Your Mac's file system, APFS, uses space-efficient clones while copying a file within the same volume.

Although hard links take no actual disk space, Finder counts them (at least) twice as distinct files, resulting in inaccurate estimation of folder sizes.

Finder might incorrectly interpret hard links as another copy of the file.

Why would you use a third-party app when there are multiple built-in ways to check the disk space on your Mac? Here are some reasons: If you want something more thorough, CleanMyMac X (Opens in a new window) was able to find even more deletable files on my system, but it costs $35 for a one-year license.Why You Should Use a Mac Disk Space Analyzer It'll present you with a list of removable files, and you can click Run Cleaner to delete them.

What is other on mac hard drive space install#

Install the app, open it up, and click the Analyze button in the bottom-right corner. Those caches will fill right back up as you continue using your computer, so this is only worthwhile if you're extremely low on space and just need to get by for a few days while you finish that large project, or wait for a bigger hard drive in the mail.ĬCleaner (Opens in a new window) is a free program that will scan your system for temporary internet files, system logs, and other unnecessary files. Many people advocate clearing these caches occasionally to free up space, but unlike the above tricks, clearing temporary files only helps you.well, temporarily. Your computer keeps a collection of temporary files on its hard drive so it can re-access them later. It may not be the prettiest disk space analyzer available for macOS, but it's free and offers an exhaustive list of which folders, files, and file types are hogging your hard drive. If you don't have macOS Sierra, or you want to drill down even further into your system, you can accomplish similar things with a tool like Disk Inventory X (Opens in a new window). (Just don't forget to empty the Trash when you're done-if files are in the Trash, they're still taking up space on your Mac!) Right-click any of these files to delete them, and you should be able to free up a decent amount of space.

You will see how much space is occupied by different categories like Apps, Photos, System, Trash, Other, etc. Take the mouse pointer to colored sections. For example, you may find that you have multiple gigabytes of video from an old project you no longer need, or huge iOS backups from devices you no longer own. Click on the Apple logo from the top-left and choose About This Mac. The left sidebar shows you each of the aforementioned categories, and you can click on them to see the biggest files of that type. If you discover you have 100GB of music on a 128GB drive, for example, then it's a fair bet you should clean up that iTunes library.Ĭlick the Manage button and you will have the option to see a much more detailed breakdown. If that overview says you're running macOS 10.12 Sierra or higher, then you can merely click the Storage tab to get a basic idea of what's taking up so much space on your drive-like documents, photos, music, and so on. Click the Apple menu in the top-left corner of the menu bar and choose About This Mac. The bigger the files you can delete, the more space you can free up-so let's go hunting.

What is other on mac hard drive space how to#

How to Set Up Two-Factor Authentication.

What is other on mac hard drive space Pc#

How to Record the Screen on Your Windows PC or Mac.

How to Convert YouTube Videos to MP3 Files.

How to Save Money on Your Cell Phone Bill.

How to Free Up Space on Your iPhone or iPad.

How to Block Robotexts and Spam Messages.