How to Clean Up Disk Space on Mac: 10 Ways to Free Up GBs Today 2026

That “startup disk almost full” warning is one of the most frustrating things a Mac can show you — especially when you have no idea where all your storage went. macOS slows down noticeably when your drive drops below about 10% free space, and certain tasks (like video editing or running virtual machines) grind to a halt entirely.

The good news: you almost certainly don’t need to buy a paid cleaner app or upgrade your storage. A few targeted steps — most of which take under five minutes — can typically recover 20–60 GB on a Mac that hasn’t been cleaned up recently. This guide covers every method, starting with the quickest wins and working through to the deeper fixes.

Compatible with: macOS Ventura, Sonoma, and Sequoia. All methods use built-in macOS tools unless otherwise noted.

Step 1 — Check what’s actually using your storage

Before deleting anything, spend two minutes understanding where your storage is going. macOS has a built-in storage analyser that breaks everything down — and it often reveals surprises.

How to open Storage Management

macOS Ventura, Sonoma, or Sequoia:

1. Click the Apple menu (top-left corner) → System Settings
2. Click General in the left sidebar
3. Click Storage

macOS Monterey or earlier:

1. Click the Apple menu → About This Mac
2. Click the Storage tab
3. Click Manage

The coloured storage bar shows how your disk is divided. Hover over each colour to see what category it represents. Below the bar, you’ll find Apple’s built-in recommendations — these are worth enabling if you haven’t already.

Understanding the storage categories

Enable Apple’s built-in recommendations

In the Storage panel, look for these four options and enable them if they aren’t already active:

• Store in iCloud — moves Desktop, Documents, and Photos to iCloud, keeping only recent files local
• Optimise Storage — removes watched films and TV shows from Apple TV automatically
• Empty Trash Automatically — permanently deletes items in Trash after 30 days
• Reduce Clutter — opens a file browser sorted by size to find large files quickly

Step 2 — Empty the Trash and clear your Downloads folder

Estimated time: 2 minutes
Typical savings: 2 – 10 GB

It sounds too simple, but a surprising number of Mac users have never emptied the Trash — and the Downloads folder quietly accumulates gigabytes of installers, disk images, and zip archives that serve no purpose after the first use.

Empty the Trash

1. Right-click the Trash icon in the Dock
2. Select Empty Trash
3. Confirm when prompted

To prevent the Trash from building up silently in future, enable automatic emptying: open Finder → Settings (or Preferences on older macOS) → Advanced → tick Remove items from the Trash after 30 days.

Clear the Downloads folder

1. Open Finder and click Downloads in the sidebar
2. Switch to List view (Cmd + 2)
3. Click View → Show View Options → set Sort By to Size
4. Review the largest files at the top — look for .dmg disk images, .pkg installers, and .zip archives you no longer need
5. Select what you don’t need and move to Trash (Cmd + Delete), then empty Trash

Step 3 — Delete unused apps and their leftover files

Estimated time: 10–15 minutes
Typical savings: 2 – 20 GB (more if Xcode or developer tools are installed)

Most people are familiar with deleting apps by dragging them to Trash — but this only removes the app itself. Every app leaves behind support files, preferences, caches, and logs scattered throughout your Library folder, often totalling hundreds of megabytes per app.

Find your largest apps

1. Open the Storage panel (Step 1)
2. Click Applications in the sidebar
3. The list is sorted by size — work through the top offenders

Properly uninstall an app without third-party tools

1. Drag the app from your Applications folder to the Trash
2. Open Finder → click Go in the menu bar → Go to Folder
3. Type ~/Library and press Enter
4. Check these three folders and delete any subfolder named after the app you just removed:
   • ~/Library/Application Support/
   • ~/Library/Caches/
   • ~/Library/Preferences/
5. Empty the Trash

Easier option: AppCleaner (free)

AppCleaner (freemacsoft.net) is a free utility that automatically finds and lists all associated files when you drag an app into it. It’s the simplest way to ensure a complete uninstall without manual Library hunting. Drag the app onto AppCleaner’s window, review the file list, and click Remove.

Step 4 — Clear system and app caches

Estimated time: 5 minutes
Typical savings: 1 – 10 GB

Caches are temporary files that apps create to speed up future actions — loading a webpage faster, rendering a thumbnail without reprocessing the original, and so on. They’re completely safe to delete because every app will simply recreate its cache the next time it needs one.

Clear user caches manually

1. Quit all open apps
2. Open Finder → Go → Go to Folder
3. Type ~/Library/Caches and press Enter
4. Select all folders inside (Cmd + A) and move them to Trash
5. Empty the Trash

Clear system caches

1. Open Finder → Go → Go to Folder
2. Type /Library/Caches (without the ~) and press Enter
3. You may be prompted for your administrator password
4. Select and delete the contents as above

Clear browser caches

Safari: Open Safari → Settings → Advanced → enable Show Develop menu in menu bar → click Develop in the menu bar → Empty Caches. Alternatively: Safari → Settings → Privacy → Manage Website Data → Remove All.

Google Chrome: Open Chrome → Settings → Privacy and security → Clear browsing data → tick Cached images and files → Clear data.

Firefox: Open Firefox → Settings → Privacy & Security → scroll to Cookies and Site Data → Clear Data.

Step 5 — Manage iCloud and optimise Photos storage

Estimated time: 5 minutes to set up (savings accumulate automatically over hours/days)
Typical savings: 10 – 50 GB+ for users with large photo or video libraries

For most Mac users, Photos is the single largest storage consumer — especially if you have years of videos and high-resolution images. The good news is that macOS can automatically move full-resolution files to iCloud and keep only compact thumbnails locally, freeing up enormous amounts of space with no visible difference to your experience.

Enable Optimise Mac Storage for Photos

1. Open the Photos app
2. Click Photos in the menu bar → Settings (or Preferences on older macOS)
3. Click the iCloud tab
4. Make sure iCloud Photos is ticked
5. Select Optimise Mac Storage (rather than “Download Originals”)

macOS will now keep full-resolution photos in iCloud and store smaller versions locally. When you open a photo, the full version downloads automatically. This requires sufficient iCloud storage — if your iCloud is nearly full, consider upgrading your plan (50 GB costs £0.99/month, 200 GB costs £2.99/month).

Delete duplicate photos

macOS Ventura and later has a built-in duplicate detection feature in the Photos app:

1. Open Photos
2. In the left sidebar, scroll to Utilities → click Duplicates
3. Review the duplicates detected and click Merge to keep the best copy and delete the rest

Enable Optimise Storage for iCloud Drive

1. Click the Apple menu → System Settings
2. Click your Apple ID at the top of the sidebar
3. Click iCloud
4. Enable Optimise Mac Storage

Files in iCloud Drive that you haven’t accessed recently will be stored in the cloud only, freeing their local space. They download instantly when you need them.

Step 6 — Remove old iOS and iPadOS backups

Estimated time: 3 minutes
Typical savings: 5 – 40 GB

Every time you back up an iPhone or iPad to your Mac, it creates a complete local backup that can easily be 5–15 GB in size. If you’ve backed up multiple devices over the years — or upgraded phones without deleting the old backups — these accumulate silently and become one of the largest hidden storage consumers on a Mac.

Delete old backups — macOS Ventura, Sonoma, Sequoia

1. Connect your iPhone or iPad to your Mac (or simply open Finder)
2. In the Finder sidebar under Locations, click your device name
3. Click Manage Backups
4. You’ll see a list of all backups stored on this Mac with their dates and sizes
5. Right-click any backup you no longer need and select Delete Backup

Delete old backups — macOS Monterey or earlier

1. Open iTunes (if still using an older macOS)
2. Go to iTunes → Preferences → Devices
3. Select old backups and click Delete Backup

Step 7 — Delete Time Machine local snapshots

Estimated time: 3–5 minutes
Typical savings: 5 – 20 GB

When your Time Machine backup drive isn’t connected, macOS stores temporary local snapshots of your files on the internal drive — so you can still recover recent versions of documents even without the external drive nearby. These snapshots are shown as part of System Data in the storage bar and can quietly consume 5–20 GB without any indication of where they’ve gone.

Check how many local snapshots you have

1. Open Terminal (find it via Spotlight: Cmd + Space, type “Terminal”)
2. Type the following command and press Enter:

tmutil listlocalsnapshots /

You’ll see a list of snapshots with timestamps. Each one consumes disk space.

Delete all local snapshots

1. In Terminal, type the following command and press Enter:

sudo tmutil deletelocalsnapshots /

2. Enter your administrator password when prompted (the cursor won’t move as you type — this is normal)
3. Press Enter. macOS will delete all local snapshots

This is completely safe. Time Machine will create new local snapshots automatically when needed, and the next time you connect your backup drive, a full backup will run as normal.

Alternative: connect your Time Machine drive

Simply plugging in your external Time Machine drive and letting a backup run will cause macOS to clear old local snapshots automatically. If you have the drive handy, this is the simplest approach.

Step 8 — Find and remove large hidden files

Estimated time: 10 minutes
Typical savings: Highly variable — can be 0 or 30+ GB depending on what’s lurking

Some of the largest files on a Mac are never visible in everyday use — they’re buried deep in Library folders or are the kind of thing you install once and forget about entirely.

Use the built-in Large Files viewer

1. Open the Storage panel (Step 1)
2. Click Documents in the sidebar
3. Click the Large Files tab
4. Review the list — this shows files over a certain size across your entire drive
5. Select anything you no longer need and click Delete

Common large hidden files to look for

Terminal: find the largest directories on your Mac

For a power-user overview of what’s consuming the most space anywhere on the drive:

sudo du -sh /* 2>/dev/null | sort -rh | head -20

This lists the 20 largest top-level directories. Run it in Terminal and look for anything unexpectedly large — then investigate further before deleting.

Step 9 — Remove duplicate files and old downloads

Estimated time: 5–10 minutes
Typical savings: 1 – 5 GB

Duplicate photos (macOS Ventura+)

As covered in Step 5, the Photos app has a built-in Duplicates album under Utilities in the sidebar. This is by far the easiest way to identify and remove duplicate images and videos.

Duplicate general files

For finding duplicate documents, PDFs, and other files, the free tool dupeGuru (dupeguru.voltaicideas.net) scans specified folders and presents duplicates for review. Always review before deleting — some “duplicates” may be intentional versioned copies.

Tidy the Desktop

Files sitting on the Desktop aren’t just occupying storage — macOS renders every Desktop file as a live graphical object, which consumes RAM. A cluttered Desktop can noticeably slow down a Mac. Move files to appropriate folders or delete what you don’t need. Use a folder called “Desktop Archive” to quickly clear the Desktop without permanently deleting anything.

Revisit Downloads one more time

Sort Downloads by Date Added (oldest first) and delete anything more than 3 months old that isn’t a document you actively reference. Most downloads past that point are things you’ve long since finished with.

Step 10 — Remove language files and unused fonts

Estimated time: 5–10 minutes
Typical savings: 1 – 3 GB

Most macOS apps ship with support for 50 or more languages. If you only use one or two, the other language packs are occupying space for no reason.

Remove language files manually (one app)

1. Open your Applications folder
2. Right-click an app → Show Package Contents
3. Navigate to Contents → Resources
4. Look for folders ending in .lproj — each is a language pack
5. Delete all except the ones you use (e.g. keep en.lproj for English, Base.lproj always)

Remove language files from all apps at once: Monolingual

Monolingual (ingmarstein.github.io/Monolingual) is a free app that strips unwanted language files from every application in one pass. Select the languages you don’t need, click Remove, and it processes all your apps automatically. Typical savings: 1–2 GB.

Remove unused fonts

Design professionals who’ve installed hundreds of fonts over the years can reclaim 1–2 GB here. Open Font Book (in your Applications folder), select fonts you no longer use, and press Delete or go to File → Remove. Be careful not to remove system fonts — these are clearly labelled in Font Book and cannot be removed anyway.

What is “Other” storage on Mac — and how do you reduce it?

“Other” storage (called “System Data” in macOS Ventura and later) is one of the most commonly searched Mac topics — and one of the most confusing. It’s the catch-all category for everything that doesn’t fit neatly elsewhere, and it can easily show 20–40 GB even on a reasonably clean Mac.

What “Other” / System Data actually contains

After completing Steps 4, 7, and 8, most users find their System Data drops from 20–40 GB down to 8–15 GB. Some residual amount is unavoidable — macOS needs working space for swap files, system logs, and active caches. A reading of 8–12 GB for System Data on an active Mac is completely normal.

Should you use a Mac cleaner app?

If you’ve searched for Mac storage help before, you’ve probably been hit with ads for CleanMyMac, MacKeeper, or similar paid tools. Here’s an honest take.

The case for

Paid cleaner apps like CleanMyMac X do largely the same things covered in this guide — but in a single interface with one click. If you value convenience and will actually use the app regularly, it can be worth it. CleanMyMac X costs around £34/year and is well-regarded as the most legitimate option in this category.

The case against

Most users who buy these apps use them once, recover some space, and then forget about them. The manual steps in this guide are free and take less than an hour total. MacKeeper in particular has a long history of aggressive scare-marketing and is best avoided entirely.

Free tools worth using

• AppCleaner (freemacsoft.net) — complete app uninstallation, free
• Monolingual (ingmarstein.github.io/Monolingual) — removes language files, free
• dupeGuru (dupeguru.voltaicideas.net) — finds duplicate files, free
• OnyX (titanium-software.fr) — runs macOS maintenance scripts and cache cleaning, free

Verdict: Do the manual steps in this guide first. The majority of users will recover all the space they need without spending a penny. If you want to automate the maintenance going forward, CleanMyMac X is the only paid option worth considering — but it’s optional, not necessary.

Frequently asked questions

How much free space should a Mac have?

Apple recommends keeping at least 10–15% of your total drive capacity free. For a 256 GB Mac, that means at least 25–38 GB free. Below this threshold, macOS cannot manage memory efficiently and performance degrades noticeably. Below 5 GB, some operations (like software updates) may fail entirely.

Why is my Mac storage still full after deleting files?

The most common reasons: you deleted files but didn’t empty the Trash, Time Machine local snapshots are consuming large amounts of System Data space, app caches have rebuilt quickly, or iCloud is syncing large files down from the cloud. Run through Steps 2, 4, and 7 in this guide specifically.

Is it safe to clear the cache on a Mac?

Yes. User caches (in ~/Library/Caches) are completely safe to delete. The apps that created them will rebuild them automatically. You may notice apps feel slightly slower the first time you open them after a cache clear — this is normal and temporary.

What is System Data on Mac and why is it so large?

System Data (previously called “Other”) is a catch-all category that includes app caches, Time Machine local snapshots, log files, browser data, VM disk images, fonts, and plugins. It can legitimately be 8–15 GB on a healthy Mac. Anything over 20–25 GB usually means there are caches to clear, snapshots to delete, or large hidden files to investigate. See the full breakdown above.

How do I free up space on Mac without deleting anything?

Enable Optimise Mac Storage for iCloud Drive and Optimise Mac Storage in Photos. These move files to iCloud while keeping them accessible, reducing local storage without permanently deleting anything. You’ll need sufficient iCloud storage capacity for this to work meaningfully.

Does macOS Sequoia have a built-in storage cleanup tool?

Yes. Go to System Settings → General → Storage. This panel shows a breakdown of your storage, offers built-in recommendations, and lets you browse and delete large files directly. It won’t clear caches or remove Time Machine snapshots automatically, but it’s an excellent starting point.

Keeping your Mac clean — a simple maintenance routine

Running through this full guide once will recover significant space, but building a light routine keeps your Mac running well permanently.

Have a question about your specific Mac model or macOS version, or found a step here that recovered a surprising amount of space? Drop it in the comments — we read and respond to every one.