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- May 02, 2019 Select any app, and a new page shows the usage in two parts: the amount of space the app itself uses (in light gray at the top) and the space used by the app's data and documents.
- Clear AirSpace is an innovative VFR flight planning and in-flight navigation application for Windows. Functions available: - in-flight navigation - AIP Charts - Checklists viewer - Temporary Segregated Area (TSA) - Temporary Reserved Area (TRA) - Aerodrome Traffic Zones (ATZ) - Terminal Conrol Area (TMA) - visualizing the airway: airports, top & lower airways, reporting points, etc.
- To find out which apps are taking up space, open the Settings menu and go to Apps Apps & features and choose Sort by size. To uninstall an app from this menu, click the app and then click Uninstall.
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.
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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?
How To Clear Space On Your Mac
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. Social booth software for mac. 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. 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.
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.
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
Ever since Apple introduced the Optimized Storage feature, Mac users got the option of saving space by storing content in the cloud. Google calendar app for mac. 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!
This article describes several ways to free-up space on your Mac so that you can increase available space on your computer:
Related: Mac OS X: What is “other” storage and how to remove
1.Determine how much disk space you have
Open Disk Utility (Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility), then click your disk then click info, as seen in the following screen shot:
2.Delete items you no longer need
Move files you do not need to the Trash or select an item you want to delete and press command+delete. Then empty your trash by selecting Empty Trash from the Finder menu.
Also note that some applications, such as iPhoto, iMovie and Mail, have their own Trash. So you may want to empty their trash too. Here is how:
- Mail: click Mailbox > Erase Deleted Items > In All Accounts, and Mailbox > Erase Junk Mail. (instead of deleting, you may also consider archiving your email, see #6: Compress your items below)
- iPhoto: click iPhoto > Empty iPhoto Trash.
- iMovie: click File > Move to Trash or File > Move Rejected Clips to Trash.
3.Delete Downloads
Anything you download from the Internet are stored in the Downloads folder. You may want to delete these items. First check to make sure that you do not need any of these items. Click Finder then download. And drag any item you do not need to the Trash then empty the trash. For instance you may want to delete the disk image (.dmg) files.
4.Delete apps you no longer use
Open your Applications folder and delete any apps that you no longer use. If you want to delete/uninstall an app that you purchased from the Mac App Store, open Launchpad then press and hold down the app icon that you want to remove, when they jiggle, click the delete (x) button. If you want to remove other apps, drag the app icon to the trash then empty the trash.
5.Move files to another disk
You may want to consider moving items (such as photos, large files, movies, etc.) to another disk, such as an external drive, USB drive, DVD, or cloud storage.
6.Compress large items
You may want to compress your files because compressed files take up less storage space. Here is how you can locate large files so you can compress:
- Select Finder > Go > Home > File > Find then open the Kind menu, then select Other. Now check the checkbox for File Size. Now enter a file size (e.g. 50MB) and find items that are larger than 50MB.
- To compress items, simple choose a file to compress and press control+click then choose Compress.
- If you want to archive your emails, launch the Mail app, select a folder to archive, e.g. the Inbox, drag it to the desktop. Now you will see a mbox folder. Then control-click on this folder and select “Create Archive of ‘Inbox.mbox'” then delete the messages from Mail.
7.Clean up temporary files, system caches and logs
Free Up Space Mac
You may clean up a variety of System logs and temporary files to increase your Mac’s disk space. Use third party utilities like MainMenu or similar others can help you. Download and install, if you want to run these maintenance scripts.
Free Apps For Mac Computer
8.Clear your browser’s cache
Clear Space Mac
Clearing the cache could free space on your Mac. If you are using Safari, you can do this in Safari by clicking Safari > Reset Safari. You can do the same in other browsers as well, Chrome, Firefox etc.
Obsessed with tech since the early arrival of A/UX on Apple, Sudz (SK) is responsible for the editorial direction of AppleToolBox. He is based out of Los Angeles, CA.
Sudz specializes in covering all things macOS, having reviewed dozens of OS X and macOS developments over the years.
In a former life, Sudz worked helping Fortune 100 companies with their technology and business transformation aspirations.