How To Free Up The Other Space On Mac

The Optimized Storage features of your Mac help you save storage space by storing your content in iCloud and making it available on demand:

If you were wondering what Other Storage on Mac is, and how to delete itin order to free up space, read this article to find out! 4 minute read Published 14 July 2021, 12:40 EDT.

When storage space is needed, files, photos, movies, email attachments, and other files that you seldom use are stored in iCloud 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.

If you are running low on storage space and seeing the Other category holding up a significant chunk of your storage space, here is a guide to help you identify what constitutes the Other storage.
Free up disk space on Mac 1. Find large files you don’t need. Potential space reclaimed: 2-5 GB. Go to your desktop and press Command + F; Choose “This Mac” Select Other in the dropdown menu; Under the Search Attributes menu, tick File Size and File Extension; Well done! Now you can type in different file extensions and sort the.

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.

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.

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 iCloud 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

Click the Optimize button to save space by automatically removing watched movies and TV shows. When storage space is needed, movies or TV shows that you purchased from Apple and already watched are removed from your Mac. Click the download icon next to a movie or TV show to download it again.

Your Mac will also save space by keeping only recent email attachments on this Mac when storage space is needed. You can manually download any attachments at any time by opening the email or attachment, or saving 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 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.

Learn how to redownload apps, music, movies, TV shows, and books.

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Where to find the settings for each feature

The button for each recommendation in the Storage Management window affects one or more settings in other apps. You can also control those settings directly within each app.

If you're using macOS Catalina or later, choose Apple menu  > System Preferences, click Apple ID, then select iCloud in the sidebar: Store in iCloud turns on the Optimize Mac Storage setting on the right. To turn off iCloud Drive entirely, deselect iCloud Drive.
If you're using macOS Mojave or earlier, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click iCloud, then click Options next to iCloud Drive. Store in iCloud turns on the Desktop & Documents Folders and Optimize Mac Storage settings.
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.

If you're using macOS Catalina or later, open the Apple TV app, choose TV > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Files. Optimize Storage selects “Automatically delete watched movies and TV shows.”
In you're using macOS Mojave or earlier, open iTunes, choose iTunes > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Advanced. Optimize Storage selects “Automatically delete watched movies and TV shows.”
In Mail, choose Mail > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Accounts. In the Account Information section on the right, Optimize Storage sets the Download Attachments 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

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 described in this article, 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.

Learn more

The Storage pane of About This Mac is the best way to determine the amount of storage space available on your Mac. Disk Utility and other apps might show storage categories such as Not Mounted, VM, Recovery, Other Volumes, Other, Free, or Purgeable. Don't rely on these categories to understand how to free up storage space or how much storage space is available for your data.
When you duplicate a file on an APFS-formatted volume, that file doesn't use additional storage space on the volume. Deleting a duplicate file 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.

HomeMACMac optimization: Free Up Other Space on Mac

People have been wondering about what is the “Other Space” on Mac. Is it the space consumed by the files user use or any other hidden files? How to free up local disk space by removing junk files from mac?
You can now know the answers to these questions here.

What is the “Other Space” on Mac?

Choose the Apple menu on the upper left ribbon of the screen and Choose About this Mac. From the tabs Choose Storage tab to view the storage consumption of files in Mac.

The other space as shown in above image consumes additional space when compared to the disk space consumed by the user data(including audio, multimedia, photos, applications and backup files). The other data as mentioned occupies data such as:

System cache
System Folders
Application extensions and Plug-ins.
Certain files not recognized by the Spotlight.
Certain media files which are stored under files not recognized by Spotlight.
To easily clean junk files on mac follow the Mac OS optimization technique as described below.

How to free up and remove junk files from Mac?

Users always have query that they hardly have any disk space left in their Mac.

Step 1: Delete the junk files permanently.

Users usually have misconceptions that if the data is in Trash, the data is deleted, but it may take up a part of data in your disk. So you need to permanently delete the data to free up memory on mac.
To delete data permanently:

Go to the Finder Tab on the menu bar and Select Empty Trash.This permanent disk will free up memory and allow the disk to know that the space is available for storage.

Step 2: Optimizing Storage

The most of the data stored in system is usually occupied by photographs. The high resolution photographs take a huge amount of Disk Space. But you can choose to optimize your storage by cleaning up your mac.

Open your Albums and Move to File > Select preferences and Choose iCloud icon.
You can choose to Optimize Mac Storage manually. This will allow the users to store full resolution images on cloud and download the file from Apple server when you need to access the images. If the system has enough space it will store the images on system.
Disable My Photo Stream which will restrict from downloading the images to your system and keep all the images on the cloud.

How To Clean My Macbook Hard Drive

Step 3: Deleting Unwanted Files

(Note: Mac OS is extremely sensitive to deletion of data files that must not be deleted. Hence it is recommended to backup your data using Time Machine or any other backup technique.)

Sometimes you don’t know what kind of files are being deleted. Download the OmniDiskSweeper and drag them to your Applications.

Once it is installed do no open the application as it will search on the limited files. But we need to search a little more deeper to find out all the other spaces.
Open spotlight and search for terminal and type the code exactly as mentioned:
The above command will prompt you to enter the administrative password. The command gives the root folder access to OmniDiskSweeper. The window will automatically appear. Select the booting device and click on Sweep.
Once the process is completed you can start deleting files to free up local disk space on a mac .
(Note: Make sure to delete only the files that are not necessary and the files you are aware about. Do not delete the System files unless you are completely sure about deleting the messages.)

You can view dozens of files here which are unnecessarily occupying space.

Steps 4: Removing Corrupted Files and free up disk space

If there are some caches and some files that do not free ram on mac, you can make use ofAppleJack. This works in single user which makes it different with its working. Download AppleJack and to use and follow the steps:

Shut down the Mac.
Press the Power button on keyboard and immediately press Command + F6 button.
A screen appears as a booting screen. As soon as it stops type the following command as shown here:

How To Free Up The Other Space On Mac Computer

Press enter and Applejack will ask the directory and again press enter to scan the drive and it will rebuild the computer automatically.
If any corrupted files are present: Go to Preferences and under Corrupt folder. You can find the corrupted files and delete them.

Since, users are unaware about how to clean junk files on mac because of inaccessibility to these files through spotlight. In my opinion, this Mac Optimization method is worth trying as it will boost up the speed of Mac and free up local disk space for storage consumed by Other space.