• Best Tool For Cleaning Up Other Mac Storage
• Best Cleanup Tool For Mac
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• Best Tool For Cleaning Up Other Mac Storage Devices
• Best Mac Cleaning Utility

Best Mac data recovery software recovers whatever you lost from Mac machines & storage devices. Contacts and other files on iOS 11/10/9/8 devices easily. Best Mac cleaner for Mac OS X 10.7 - clean up your Mac system junk files (caches, logs, trash) and remove unwanted applications completely for more disk space and better system. It's spring again, and with the new season comes the age-old ritual of cleaning out things you ignored for most of the year. If you're like most of us, this includes your Mac.

Optimized Storage in macOS Sierra and later can save space by storing your content in the cloud and making it available on demand. When storage space is needed, files, photos, movies, email attachments, and other files that you seldom use are stored in the cloud automatically. Each file stays right where you last saved it, and downloads when you open it. Files that you’ve used recently remain on your Mac, along with optimized versions of your photos.

If you haven't yet upgraded to macOS Sierra or later, learn about other ways to free up storage space.

It's spring again, and with the new season comes the age-old ritual of cleaning out things you ignored for most of the year. If you're like most of us, this includes your Mac.

To begin, choose About This Mac from the Apple menu , then click Storage. You'll see an overview of your free space and the space used by different categories of files, including apps, documents, and photos:

Click the Manage button to see the following recommendations for optimizing your storage. (The Manage button is available only in macOS Sierra or later.) You'll see fewer options if some recommendations are already turned on.

Store in iCloud

Click the Store in iCloud button, then choose from these options:

• Desktop and Documents. Store all files from these two locations in iCloud Drive. When storage space is needed, only the files you recently opened are kept on your Mac, so that you can easily work offline. Files stored only in the cloud show a download icon , which you can double-click to download the original file. Learn more about this feature.
  
• Photos. Store all original, full-resolution photos and videos in iCloud Photos. When storage space is needed, only space-saving (optimized) versions of photos are kept on your Mac. To download the original photo or video, just open it.
  
• Messages. Store all messages and attachments in iCloud. When storage space is needed, only the messages and attachments you recently opened are kept on your Mac. Learn more about Messages in iCloud.

Storing files in iCloud uses the storage space in your iCloud storage plan. If you reach or exceed your iCloud storage limit, you can either buy more iCloud storage or make more iCloud storage available. iCloud storage starts at 50GB for $0.99 (USD) a month, and you can purchase additional storage directly from your Apple device. Learn more about prices in your region.

Optimize Storage

Best Tool For Cleaning Up Other Mac Storage

Click the Optimize button, then choose from these options.

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• Automatically remove watched iTunes movies and TV shows. When storage space is needed, iTunes movies or TV shows that you 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 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, GarageBand, iOS Files, iTunes, or Trash.

Some categories allow you delete files directly. (If you purchased the file from the Mac App Store, iBooks Store, or iTunes Store, you might be able to download it again.) 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.

Where to find the settings for each feature

Store in iCloud:

• Choose Apple menu  > System Preferences, click iCloud, then click the Options button next to iCloud Drive. Store in iCloud turns on the Desktop & Documents Folders and Optimize Mac Storage settings. To turn off iCloud Drive entirely, deselect iCloud Drive.
• In Photos, choose Photos > Preferences, then click iCloud. Store in iCloud selects iCloud Photos and Optimize Mac Storage.
• In Messages, choose Messages > Preferences, then click iMessage. Store in iCloud selects Enable Messages in iCloud.

Optimize Storage:

• In iTunes, choose iTunes > Preferences, then click Advanced. Optimize Storage selects “Automatically delete watched movies and TV shows.”
• In Mail, choose Mail > Preferences, then click Accounts. In the Account Information section of your email account, Optimize Storage sets the Download Attachments pop-up menu to either Recent or None.

Empty Trash Automatically: From the Finder, choose Finder > Preferences, then click Advanced. Empty Trash Automatically selects “Remove items from the Trash after 30 days.”

Other ways that macOS helps automatically save space

macOS Sierra and later 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:

• Delete 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 drive.
• 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.

Learn more

• When you duplicate a file on an APFS-formatted volume, that file doesn't use additional storage space on the volume. Deleting a duplicate frees up only the space required by any data you might have added to the duplicate. If you no longer need any copies of the file, you can recover all of the storage space by deleting both the duplicate and the original file.
• If you're using a pro app and Optimize Mac Storage, learn how to make sure that your projects are always on your Mac and able to access their files.

If you’ve ever clicked on the Storage tab in About This Mac, you noticed that it color-codes storage by type. There’s movies, audio, apps, documents, and other. But what is “other”? How to find out what's included in 'Other' storage category? Simply, anything that macOS is unsure how to categorize. It knows that MP3, for example, is audio, and MP4 is video. But there are lots of other, more obscure file formats that get categorized as “other”.

Depending on how you use your Mac and what apps you run, that “other” category could be taking up quite a bit of space, and you could free it up very easily — potentially saving yourself from having to buy additional storage.

How to find and remove files from the 'Other' storage category

'Other' files can quickly clog up a Mac low on storage — especially if you're storing a large number of iOS backups, old files, useless apps. Old backups take up 4-5GB each, on average. Old documents and browser caches can take up to 100GB.

To find and eliminate useless data from Other Storage space you will have to dig a bit.

As well as being a great way to uninstall applications you no longer need, CleanMyMac can rid your Mac of random files that are taking up space. These include mail attachments, iTunes downloads, and system files.

Here’s how step by step.

How to free up more Other Storage space

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1. Click on the Large & Old Files tool in the left-hand sidebar, and then Scan.
2. When scanning is finished, select a file type or date, then click on Sort By and choose size. You’ll now have a list of the large and old files in that category, listed the largest first. That makes it very easy to delete files taking up the most space.
3. When you’ve identified a file you want to get rid of, click the checkbox next to it and click Remove.

Once you’ve got rid of large and old files, you can use the other cleaning tools to remove unwanted items. Mail attachments is good next step — you’ll be amazed at how many heavy attachments you’ve downloaded and no longer need. The best thing about this tool is that if you use an IMAP account, like iCloud or Gmail, you can always download the attachments again later if you need them.

To get rid of mail attachments, choose the option in the cleaning tools section and follow the steps above.

How to identify and remove duplicate files

Duplicate copies of files are a waste space. Most of us don’t realize how many duplicates hide on our Macs. Gemini can identify and easily remove them.

1. If you haven’t already installed it, search for Gemini in Setapp and click Install.
2. When installed, launch it and ready the information cards that appear. Click Next when you’re finished.
3. Drag a folder onto the big “+” symbol. For example, to search for duplicates in your home directory, drag your user folder onto it.
4. Gemini will now start scanning your home directory and all the folders within it. When it gets to your iTunes and Photos libraries, it will ask you to open those apps. You can either do that or skip them and Gemini will not scan them.
5. When finished scanning, you can click Clean Up and safely get rid of all the duplicates.
6. If you’d rather check what Gemini found as duplicates first, click Review Duplicates. In the review window, click the dropdown arrow next to each folder to see its contents. When you’re happy that files really are duplicates, check the box next to the one you want to delete. When you’re done, click Remove.

Clean up other storage with Disk Drill

Disk Drill’s clean-up tool also allows you to identify and get rid of files you don’t need. The great thing about Disk Drill is that it allows you to view and filter files in lots of different ways, allowing you to see a really detailed picture of where your storage is being used up.

1. Install Disk Drill from Setapp, if you haven’t already done so.
2. Click on the Clean up tool in Disk Drill’s toolbar. When the next window opens, click Let’s Get Started, choose the drive whose storage you want to free up, and click Scan.
3. When it’s finished scanning, Disk Drill will display the files and folders it’s found, listing them according to how much disk space they occupy. To see the files inside folders, click the drop down arrow next to the folder.
4. Use the menus to change how files are listed, or to filter files — say, by only listing those that take up more than 100MB.
5. When you’ve identified a file you want to delete, click the checkbox next to it and click Remove file.

Best Tool For Cleaning Up Other Mac Storage Devices

Best Mac Cleaning Utility

Using all or a combination of methods above will allow you to bring your Mac’s storage under control in no time. As for the frequency, conducting a thorough clean-up once a month sounds about right to us, but your mileage may vary.