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Knowledge Base: Free up space on your Mac

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Find out how much storage is available on your Mac

Choose Apple menu > About This Mac, then click Storage. Each segment of the bar is an estimate of the

storage space used by a category of files. Move your pointer over each segment for more detail.

Click the Manage button to open the Storage Management window, pictured below. This button is available

only in macOS Sierra or later.

Manage storage on your Mac

The Storage Management window offers recommendations for optimizing your storage. If some

recommendations are already turned on, you will see fewer recommendations.

Knowledge Base: Free up space on your Mac

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UC San Diego Health Information Services

Optimize Storage

Click the Optimize button, then choose from these options.

 Automatically remove watched movies and TV shows. When storage space is needed, movies or TV shows

that you purchased from the iTunes Store and already watched are removed from your Mac. Click

the download icon next to a movie or TV show to download it again

 Download only recent attachments. Mail automatically downloads only the attachments that you recently

received. You can manually download any attachments at any time by opening the email or attachment, or

saving the attachment to your Mac

 Don't automatically download attachments. Mail downloads an attachment only when you open the email

or attachment, or save the attachment to your Mac

Optimizing storage for movies, TV shows, and email attachments doesn't require iCloud storage space.

Empty Trash Automatically

Empty Trash Automatically permanently deletes files that have been in the Trash for more than 30 days.

Reduce Clutter

Reduce Clutter helps you to identify large files and files you might no longer need. Click the Review Files

button, then choose any of the file categories in the sidebar, such as Applications, Documents, Music Creation,

or Trash.

You can delete the files in some categories directly from this window. Other categories show the total storage

space used by the files in each app. You can then open the app and decide whether to delete files from within

it.

Knowledge Base: Free up space on your Mac

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UC San Diego Health Information Services

Other ways that macOS helps automatically save space

With macOS Sierra or later, your Mac automatically takes these additional steps to save storage space:

 Detects duplicate downloads in Safari, keeping only the most recent version of the download

 Reminds you to delete used app installers

 Removes old fonts, languages, and dictionaries that aren't being used

 Clears caches, logs, and other unnecessary data when storage space is needed

How to free up storage space manually

Even without using the Optimized Storage features of Sierra or later, you can take other steps to make more

storage space available:

 Music, movies, and other media can use a lot of storage space. Learn how to delete music,

movies, and TV shows from your device

 Delete other files that you no longer need by moving them to the Trash, then emptying the Trash.

The Downloads folder is good place to look for files that you might no longer need

 Move files to an external storage device

 Compress files

 Delete unneeded email: In the Mail app, choose Mailbox > Erase Junk Mail. If you no longer need

the email in your Trash mailbox, choose Mailbox > Erase Deleted Items