Some Great Tips to Free Up Your MacBook Hard Drive Space

If your brand new MacBook is not so brand new and you have been using it for a while now, you should have noticed that there is not that much free space on the hard drive. Despite the fact that you are not installing new apps or downloading various things, the amount of space continues to shrink.

That happens for a lot of reasons but that does not mean you need to go ahead and start panicking. Doing everything manually is an option and if you have been struggling with not having enough space, continue reading and you will find more than enough alternatives to fix the problem.

Scratch Disks

Photoshop is one of the most popular software for editing images. When used on Mac, Photoshop lets its users assign multiple scratch disk for more space.

When you spend a lot of time working on multiple layers and rely on the software almost every day, it eats up a lot of your device’s space. You ought to read this post to get a better understanding of what kind of a problem it is and how to clear your scratch disk.

Download Folder

It would not be a stretch to say that most files you download are for temporary use. However, they tend to be forgotten, mostly because of their small size. However, if you end up in a habit of neglecting everything that you download and forget to delete it, the issue can get out of hand quickly.

Locate your download folder and see what type of files have been on it and whether they are still of any use to you. It is more than likely that you will have to spend some time deleting them. And remember that whenever you are getting messages about not having enough storage space, downloads folder is the first place to check.

Delete Apps

Even if it may appear to be something obvious, this kind of logic does not apply to every single person out there. Some have this terrible habit of putting everything on their desktop to the point when there is no more space on it. And this is not meant in a sense of physical objects, but rather applications or folders with all kinds of files.

Just like cleaning the dust off your desk and tidying it up, you need to do the same with your computer desktop. There are bound to be some apps that are no longer in use but you simply have not bothered deleting them.

You should because it will do more than just free up space. The overall performance will also improve immensely.

Make Use of External Storage

There is plenty of great cloud software like Dropbox. Most people already recommend putting most of your important files there in case something happens to the computer, but the same can be said about whenever you are in desperate need to have more space.

Security

Even if you are using anti-virus software, be it for your business needs or personal use, you can never be certain about when some unpredicted malware or adware will enter your MacBook and start to tear in.

Try to scan things regularly, at least once a week. And be careful with what you download, even if it comes from a source that you are confident in and trust.

Backups

Whenever there is a new update for the OS, some of the old files are stored and transferred as a backup. In reality, they serve absolutely no purpose and you should be better off getting rid of those, especially if you have not done so before. Quite a few files should have accumulated in that time.

You will need to use iTunes to fix this problem. Open it and select “Preferences”, then “Devices” and locate the backup folder. You can choose whichever you want to delete from there.

Empty the Trash Bin

Keep in mind that whenever you press the “delete” button on something, you can not be certain that it will be gone from the computer just like that. You need to double-check on that by emptying the trash bin.

Email Attachments

One thing that you may not be aware of is that some attachments from the emails you receive are finding their way on the computer.

Whenever you open an email and click on the attachment two times, not on purpose, it gets downloaded into the mail download folder.

The solution is pretty straightforward. Go in that folder and delete anything that you do not need.

In conclusion, if you are experiencing some problems with how much storage space you have on your MacBook, it would be wise to take a proactive approach and sort this problem on your own. Follow these tips and you should be perfectly fine.