05-10-2021

How Do I Free Space On My Startup Disk Mac

If you do not have time to manually clean up your startup disk, we recommend using MacCleaner Pro to both analyze disk space usage and free up disk space. When it comes to cleaning the system disk and preventing the “Startup Disk Full” message, this is the fastest solution. An overfilled startup disk will also cause your MacBook to run slower since it won’t be able to use RAM as effectively. This means keeping your disk clean is extremely important for daily operations. To check what’s taking up space on your mac, you can choose “Manage” on the startup disk warning notification.

You can find a lot of articles on various tips for cleaning storage space on the Mac. Unsurprisingly, most of them written by companies that build and sell disk cleaning software. The truth is you can clean the disk space from junk manually, without any special software.

Choose “About This Mac.”. Note - If you are running an older version of macOS you may have to first click “More Info” and then “Storage”. You’ve probably got a bit more space, and you’ll want to keep it that way. The only way to prevent a “your disk is almost full” is by keeping your Mac clean.

So, how you can clean your Mac startup disk without any specialized software?

To free up disk space on your Mac start with simple steps: empty Trash, delete files from the Downloads folder. If there is still not enough storage, then consider deleting large files. They can be found by clicking on About This Mac -> Storage -> Manage.

Here are 8 of the best disk cleaning steps:

1. Empty Trash

  • (Lucas's MacLifeHacks #23)Is your Mac startup disk full? Here's the quick fix to free up space! Reclaim the space eaten up by 'Other'.Subscribe for more life.
  • Aug 27, 2018 How to free up space on a Mac? What is a “Mac Startup Disk”? Your Mac startup disk is a volume or a partition of a drive that contains a usable operating system. You can set your Mac to automatically use a specific startup volume, or you can temporarily override this choice at startup.

This is the lowest hanging fruit to start the cleaning disk space process. When one deletes any file the latter does not disappear right away.

Instead, it goes to Trash, so if you accidentally deleted something or deleted and then changed your mind, it is possible to restore the files.

This flexibility, however, comes with a price.

When deleted files go to the Trash they still using the disk space and prevent adding new data.

If you didn’t clear Trash for a long time you may be surprised by how much more free disk space you can get by cleaning it.

Just find the Trash icon in the Dock and then right-click on the icon and click on Empty Trash.

2. Clean Downloads Folder

Another low hanging fruit. It is also the safest thing one can do to clear the disk space, other techniques can be quite disruptive.

The good thing about macOS is that it has a special Downloads folder, so you don’t have to go over each browser’s settings to find out where they store downloaded files.

Download folder gets populated every time when you:

  • Open a document in Safari, Chrome, or other browsers
  • Download a new app in the form of dmg or pkg files

Over time the Downloads folder gets pretty big, especially when downloading big applications such as Microsoft Office or Photoshop.

For instance, the size of Microsoft Office download (DMG file) is around 4GB.

Once the application had been installed there is no even a single reason to keep the DMG file on the disk – you can always download it again when needed.

One thing you should do before cleaning the Downloads folder is to eject all DMG disks.

How to open downloads folder on a Mac

Use the Finder app

The easiest way to open the Downloads folder is by using Finder app. The Downloads folder usually appears on the Sidebar (left panel of the Finder).

If the folder does not appear you can always enable it in the Finder menu: Go to Finder Preferences, click on the Sidebar tab and then select the Downloads option under the Favorites section.

Or you can just go directly to the folder. Use Shift+Command+G key combination and in the Go to the folder pop up window type “~/Downloads” and hit Enter.

Use Chrome

After downloading anything Chrome displays a download status in the status bar (bottom).

If you click on the arrow next to the downloaded item it and then click “Show in Finder”, then Chrome will open the Downloads folder inside the Finder app.

If you closed the status bar after downloading a file don’t worry. You can always see the downloads history by using Shift+Command+J key combination (or type chrome://downloads/ in the URL bar).

From this window, you can either click again on “Show in Finder” or click on the icon with three dots and choose Open Downloads Folder.

Use Safari

Use Option+Command+L key combination inside Safari.

Use Firefox

Use Command+J key combination to bring up Downloads history.

Now go ahead, review all the files in the Downloads folder, save the ones you need and delete the rest.

3. Use Manage Storage To Find Out The Junk Files

One of the easiest ways to estimate what’s taking up disk space on your Mac is to use Storage option (available in macOS Sierra or later).

Just click on the Apple logo in the top left corner of the screen and then click on About This Mac (first option).

Now, click on Storage tab and it will display an aggregated view of types of files you have.

For example, on my MacBook, the disk is shared by:

  • System files: 39.36GB
  • Apps: 23.65GB
  • iTunes: 7.89GB
  • Documents: 6.36GB
  • iOS files: 4.34GB
  • Other volumes: 3.9GB

To get a more detailed view click on the Manage button and let the system to update info.

The first option in the view is Recommendations.

For instance, macOS recommended me to:

  1. Store files in the iCloud
  2. Optimize Storage
  3. Empty Trash automatically
  4. Reduce Clutter

Let’s review each recommendation.

Store files in the iCloud

This is a great option with a caveat. By default, everyone gets 5GB of free space when opening an Apple Store account (pretty much anyone who has a Mac).

However, 5GB is an extremely low storage option, so Apple is upselling their iCloud and they want you to subscribe for more space.

The cheapest plan is 50GB for $0.99 per month, less than $12 a year. However, most people would need at least 200GB which costs $2.99 per month.

If you are Ok with the additional cost then this is a great option. macOS will automatically back up files to the iCloud and only keep the latest files on the disk.

Obviously, you will still be able to pull the files you need later to your local disk.

Optimize Storage

If you frequently download and watch movies on iTunes then this is a nice option.

While you can always delete the movies you already watched enabling this will allow you to not worry about maintaining movies and TV shows.

To enable click on Optimize button and then confirm your decisions.
I enabled this option just in case.

Empty Trash Automatically

We already know about the benefits of periodic Trash cleanup, so the recommendation seems to make sense to implement.

However, I am not very comfortable suggesting this to you.

The last thing I want is to learn that the file I deleted 30 days ago and suddenly need now, was automatically removed.

I heard about users that used Trash as temporary storage. They would delete the file for some period of time and then restore it when needed.

If this sounds like someone like you then this recommendation will not be useful.

Reduce Clutter

This will allow you to manually go thru the files and identify those that may be deleted.

Click on Review Files and it will change the view Documents. Here you have 3 options: Large Files, Downloads, and File Browser.

How Do I Free Space On My Startup Disk Mac Os X

We already covered Downloads.

Large Files gives you an option to get big gains by deleting the biggest files you have on the disk. It’s simple math, deleting 10 1GB files will free 10GB space when deleting 100 1KB files will only free 0.0001GB.

The last tab, File Browser, allows seeing documents created by all applications on the Mac.

The process of sifting through the File Browser is tedious and requires a lot of time, but in my opinion, this is the most valuable view.

Since the largest files are listed at the top I was able to quickly identify two issues:

I had 7.89GB of Music hidden on my drive.

This happened when I downloaded some MP3s from the Internet and uploaded them to my iPhone. I then deleted the MP3s from the disk, but they still were somewhere on the disk. They are not available on iTunes either, the only place I see them is here.

So I opened the folder in the Finder, drill down to iTunes Media and then Music folder, found the files that I thought were deleted and then moved them all to Trash.

Immediately I was able to free 7.8GB of hidden space.

Another app that does not remove files cleanly is iMovie.

After working on a movie clip that contained a lot of different smaller clips I deleted the project and thought all files were gone as well.

Only in File Browser, I was able to see that the clip and its copy are still taking space.

The interesting thing is that I couldn’t see it in the iMovie app. Deleting those files freed another gigabyte.

There are other sections in Storage Manage view and I strongly encourage to go thru all of them because everyone has a different computer setup. I just want to add some notes about two of them.

iOS Files

If you have an iPhone the backups will appear here. If you have multiple backups (as I do) I suggest deleting old ones to save space. All you need is the last one really.

Mail

While I don’t use the Mail app on this MacBook, on the Macs where I do, I periodically delete messages with attachments. While messages themselves are usually, the attachments can take a lot of space.

4. Find and delete duplicate files

Conventional wisdom tells us that file copies take additional space and it makes sense to find and delete duplicate files if you want to free some space.

In fact, some 3rd party cleaning tools specifically sell removing duplicate files feature as one of their selling points.

But macOS is not Windows.

If you have been upgrading the operating system on the Mac (and have macOS High Sierra or later) then your drive must be in APFS (Apple File System) format.

One of the features of APFS is that duplicates do not take additional space on the disk.

I decided to test this claim myself with following steps.

I downloaded Windows 10 iso to my Downloads folder.

The available free space on my startup disk immediately decreased by 4.8GB (the size of the iso file).

Then I copied the file into 5 different folders on the same disk. The space used and space available stayed the same.

Then I started deleting the files. I deleted 4 copies without affecting the free space. Then I deleted the original file.

Available space on the drive did not change.

Only when I deleted the last copy of the file I was able to claim back the free space.

By the way, I was deleting files from Trash as well.

Then I decided to see if I can trick macOS by renaming the file.

I downloaded the same gigantic file again. Then did copy and paste it in the folder.

Space did not change.

I made multiple copies with different names, but the effect was the same as in the first test.

This means macOS is smart enough to know that the file copy is not just the name, but also the contents of the file.

Bottom line: You don’t need to worry about duplicate files because they do not take additional space on disks formatted as APFS.

On the other hand, if you deleted the file and space did not change it means there is still a copy of the file somewhere because space does not get freed until the last copy of the file gets deleted.

How to know if your disk is in APFS format?

If you have an SSD disk and macOS High Sierra or later then the startup disk would be in APFS format.

If the Mac is on macOS Mojave or later then the disk in APFS.

If you still in doubt there is a simple way to find the disk format.

  • Start Disk Utility from Spotlight Search
  • Click on Macintosh HD
  • In the details page, you will see the format of the disk

5. Move Files To An External Storage

Most of the time we don’t need to store all files on the Mac startup disk. Most files, e.g. pictures from the last vacation, school graduation videos, etc, can be stored on external storage.

As we established earlier, one of the great ways to store files externally and save space on the disk is to use iCloud. The disadvantage of this approach is the cost.

Most people are reluctant to pay a monthly fee because small monthly fees tend to add up to considerable amounts over the span of multiple years.

If you are one of those people who buy a cable modem instead of renting it from the cable company (as I do) because with one-time purchase you recoupe the investment and end up with your own device then consider buying an external drive.

There are two main types of external storage currently: external SSD drives and flash drives.

You may need both as they have different purposes.

I spent numerous hours researching the best drives and if you need advice check the drives I personally recommend:

By the way, many users report that Storage screen displays that Documents files take much more space than they see in the Documents folder.

One of the things that get reported as Documents is Time Machine backups.

If you have Time Machine enabled and the snapshots stored locally eventually the entire disk may be claimed by Time Machine.

While Time Machine deletes old backups to free up some space it still tends to take as much space as available.

The solution is to either back up to an external drive or partition the startup disk and point TM to the new partition to limit the size of the snapshots.

Read more here: What Does Time Machine Backup

6. Use Compression To Shrink Files And Folders

Compress utilities

Since people started using personal computers we were always in need of extra storage.

One way to save on storage is by compressing the files. When files are compressed they take less disk space.

The downside is that files are usually are not readily available for usage, so this approach is best for archiving rarely used files.

There is an easy way to compress files and folders in macOS.

For instance, I had the Documents folder on my MacBook which I wanted to compress. The size of the folder is 257.2MB.

I opened the folder in the Finder app, right-clicked on it and selected “Compress “Documents”” option in the pop-up menu.

The Finder created one file which contained the entire folder and the size of this file was 211.9MB.

So, if I delete the original folder and keep the compressed file I would be able to save 18% of disk space.

While savings are not huge, you should know that Compressing utility in macOS is very rudimentary. There are other applications that can get better results.

I didn’t investigate which archivers are the best, I picked just a random free app and created a .7z archive with BetterZip app.

The latter produced a file with 184.6MB size which saved 29% of the original space.

I am sure there other apps that can compress better and I promised to write a comparison article later.

Create a compressed disk image

Did you know that you can create DMG files yourself? DMG stands for Disk iMaGe and you can create one yourself.

  1. Start Disk Utility from Spotlight Search.
  2. In the Disk Utility menu click on File, then New Image, and then Image from Folder. Or use the Shift+Command+N key combination.
  3. In the folder, search dialog find the folder from which you want to create an image and click on Choose button.
  4. Enter the name of the disk image file and in the Image Format select the compressed option.
  5. Click Save

The folder I used as an example was packed in an image of 223.3MB size, which is even worse than the compressed folder.

7. Clear Cache Files

If you were researching ways to remove unwanted files from the Mac, you definitely saw advice on clearing the cache. The topic is controversial in my opinion and I will explain why.

What are caches on Mac?

Caches on Mac designed to improve the performance of the applications.

For instance, Safari will cache images from the web page so when the user visits the page the second time Safari can upload the image from the cache and avoid using internet bandwidth to download it from the server.

Since the local disk is faster than the network the page will load up faster.

More Safari and other applications save in cache, faster they perform. The downside is the cache files should be stored on the local disk and take the precious space needed for other applications.

Most applications, especially those written by Apple developers, try to purge the stale cache. For instance, if you visited the web page yesterday then the cached page will load faster today and tomorrow.

But if you didn’t visit the web page for a year then it does not make sense to keep its cache. Safari and other browsers will delete old cache periodically to free space for more fresh and relevant data.

But as applications are written by individual developers, not all developers are created equal.

Some app developers may care very little about the additional work required to keep cache under control. So these applications may eventually have their cache bloated and need some way of trimming it down.

What happens if I delete all cache files on Mac?

When all cache files get deleted on Mac the applications which used cache for performance improvement will slowly build it up again.

When Safari needs to download a web page, it first checks its cache in case the file can be uploaded from the local storage.

Since cache was purged, Safari will download the web page from the Internet first time, save it in the cache again, so the next time it can read the page from the local drive.

Remember the time when you first opened your Mac?

It did not have any cache in the beginning because applications do not come with cache preinstalled. The cache gets built over a long time.

Was Mac slow at the beginning?

I don’t think so.

Did you notice it got faster over time because the applications had a chance to save some data on the local drive?

I doubt. To me, it feels the same.

The difference is noticeable when you have slow internet, e.g. dial-up.

In the US internet speeds over 50MB/s are very common, so saving the browser cache is not as important as it used to be 10 years ago.

Is it safe to delete cache files on Mac?

In 99.9% of cases deleting cache files should be safe.

Applications supposed to use cache files as a way to improve their performance. If the cache files are deleted the application will add it back to the cache if needed.

This is how it supposed to work. Would I bet my life on it? Of course, not. There are as many cache implementations as there are developers.

Can some developers write the application to depend on the existence of some files? Sure.

Can application stop working after some of its files get deleted?

Absolutely.

During my development career, I saw so much bad code so nothing can surprise me.

There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things.

Phil Karlton

Anyway, while I don’t see value in deleting the cache let me show you how to do it as safe as possible in case if you want to go this route.

How to know which cache files to delete?

Most applications use the same /Library/Caches folder to keep their cache files. Purging this folder should be enough to release significant space on the Mac. Alternatively, all browsers have the ability to clear cache from their menus.

Before deleting anything on the computer I strongly suggest backing it up.

So, if you end up deleting wrong files or some applications start misbehaving you can always go back in time when everything was green and happy.

Clearing cache in browsers

Clearing Chrome cache on Mac

  • In the Chrome use Shift+Command+Delete key combination to bring up Clear Browsing Data dialog
  • Switch to Advanced tab
  • Uncheck all checkboxes except Cached images and files
  • In Time Range select All Time
  • Click on Clear Data button

We only deleting images because they take the most space and we don’t want to lose browsing history and stored passwords.

Clearing Safari cache on Mac

In the Safari browser use Shift+Command+E key combination or find Empty Caches option in Safari’s Develop menu.

Clearing Firefox cache on Mac

  • Click on Clear Recent History under Firefox’s History menu
  • Alternatively, use fn+Shift+Command+Delete key combination on MacBook
  • Uncheck all boxes except Cache
  • Set Time range to clear to Everything
  • Hit Clear Now button

Deleting /Library/Caches folder

There are two /Library/Caches folders: one that starts with Tilda (~) and one that doesn’t. The former is a user cache and the latter is a system cache. If I were you I would never touch anything in System.

The steps to clear User cache are the following:

  • Start the Finder app
  • Under the Go menu click on Go to folder item
  • In the little dialog type ~/Library/Caches (make sure it starts with Tilda)
  • Do not delete top-level folders under Caches. Instead, drill down to each folder and delete everything under them.

Cleaning CloudKit cache on Mac

Some users ask if it is safe to delete CloudKit folder in Caches. The CloudKit folder is needed for macOS to know which files to upload to the iCloud. They keep the history so syncing happens faster. If the CloudKit folder is too big, the best way to approach is to change caching parameters in System Preferences.

What is CloudKit on Mac?

CloudKit is a service (program) that runs on Mac and manages data transfer from the computer to iCloud. Every time a new picture is added on the Mac, the CloudKit makes sure that it gets backed up in the Apple iCloud server.

Well, all this is good, but why is iCloud taking space on your Mac? What is CloudKit cache and why do you need it?

Similar to browsers, the CloudKit uses a cache to reduce the network bandwidth (data usage). Instead of deleting the iCloud cache, it’s better either to reduce the cache size or turn off caching completely.

Let me show how to do it.

Reducing iCloud cache

Steps to clear iCloud cache are following:

  1. Click on Apple Logo in the Apple menu
  2. Click on System Preferences
  3. Locate and click on Sharing icon
  4. Click on Content Caching
  5. Click on the Options button
  6. In the pop-up window decrease the cache size
  7. Restart Mac for changes to take effect

Turning off iCloud cache

If you don’t want to use iCloud caching, then turning it off in System Parameters is a better alternative to deleting CloudKit cache from the Finder.

Steps to turn of iCloud cache are following:

  1. Click on Apple Logo in the Apple menu
  2. Click on System Preferences
  3. Locate and click on Sharing icon
  4. Uncheck Content Caching option
  5. Restart Mac for changes to take effect
How do i free space on my startup disk mac blank

8. Flush DNS cache

The last thing the experts suggest to do is flushing the DNS cache.

The reason to flush DNS is generally to fix problems with connection to specific web sites. Flushing DNS does not clear significant space on the disk, so I will not do it here.

I used to do it often when I was setting up servers and playing with their domain names. However, for most Mac users I believe this step is unnecessary.

9. Upgrade your disk

While it is impossible to replace the disk in new MacBooks certain laptop models can be upgraded.

I found a good SSD solution for some old models: Feather M13 SSD. With Feather SSD you can upgrade local storage up to 1TB if your MacBook is:

  • MacBook Air 2010 – 2017
  • MacBook Pro Retina 2012 – 2015
  • MacPro Late 2013
  • Mac Mini Late 2014

Check the compatibility chart to see if your MacBook can be upgraded.

Conclusion

We reviewed some ways to remove unwanted and junk files from the MacBook to free space.

By implementing the suggestions above I found an additional 8.3GB space on my 128GB disk (almost 7% more space).

Topics:

Image credit: Flickr

System cleanup in one click
Make your Mac fast and secure with CleanMyMac X.

Once “Your disk is almost full” notification pops up on a screen, it’s time to do some work. Running low on storage might cause your Mac to slow down or behave strangely. This usually happens if you have too many outdated files, old logs, caches, and apps you no longer use. What makes the situation challenging is that most of these Mac storage gobblers are system files you never actually see.

By keeping the Mac startup disk tidy in the first place, you can avoid numerous issues that hamper performance. In this article, we provide step-by-step instructions on how to avoid the “startup disk full” problem. Spoiler: Moving files to Trash isn’t going to fix it.

What is a startup disk on Mac?

Simply put, the Mac startup disk is a hard drive containing your operating system and all the apps installed on Mac. Pretty big deal. Since it’s essentially your main disk drive, your Mac “starts up” from this disk (hence the name). Mac power users often use external hard drives in addition to the main one, but an average user has only one — the startup disk.

What does “Your disk is almost full” mean?

The warning message or a notification about “Mac startup disk almost full” lets you know there’s little space left on the main drive. The maximum amount of storage your files can occupy on a startup disk should be 85%. Anything that goes beyond that might cause performance issues. Read more info about scratch disks are full.

How to check disk space on Mac

First of all, ensure you know the name of your startup disk. It’s easy if you only use one internal drive. Otherwise, you should check it. Click on the Apple logo > About This Mac.

In the Overview section, you’ll see “Storage” with a name next to it. In most cases, it’s called “MacHD,” “Macintosh HD,” or something like that. This is the name of your startup disk.

To find out how much space you have left on a startup disk:

  1. Click on the Apple logo > About This Mac
  2. Access the Storage pane
  3. See available storage.

The storage bar also shows details on what types of files are eating up the used storage.

As you see from the screenshot, total storage is 500GB. If your computer has two startup disks (which is rare but possible), the storage is divided between the two — 250GB on each. On my Mac, around 75% of the storage is free, which means I don’t have to worry about the Mac startup disk full issue just yet. In case you have less than 15%, it’s time to free up some space and let your Mac breathe.

Apple has a built-in optimization feature for basic storage control. This alone can save you lots of disk space. Based on Apple recommendations, it allows you to set up automatic Trash cleaning, keep your movies and TV shows in iCloud (available on demand), or automatically remove movies you’ve already watched. To access the feature, click on the Apple logo > About This Mac > Storage > Manage. You can customize optimization settings flexibly, according to your needs.

How to fix “startup disk full” on Mac

Unfortunately, Apple’s storage optimization doesn’t help with deleting tons of hidden files and system junk. And that’s the trickiest part. From old caches to backups, there are lots of unneeded files suffocating storage on Mac — most of them you never see. In the following section, we explain how to dive under your Mac’s hood to remove it all step by step.

How Do I Free Space On My Startup Disk Mac

Empty the Trash

This sounds obvious. If you want to get rid of the unneeded stuff, get rid of the files you’ve already deleted. You probably know moving files to the Trash folder doesn’t mean they stop eating up storage. They are still there, just in a different spot on Mac. Here’s how to clean up Trash (on some Macs, it’s called Bin):

  1. Ctrl + Click on the Trash icon in the Dock
  2. Select Empty Trash
  3. Confirm emptying your Trash folder.

That’s it. If you want to check what’s in your Trash before deleting files, open it first, and then empty Trash by clicking on the button in the top right corner.

Delete app cache

Caches are system files created every time an app or a browser performs a specific task. Both browser and app caches are in fact supposed to speed up your Mac. They are kind of like task shortcuts — by remembering how an app or browser performed the task last time, they help perform it faster the next time you do it.

At the same time, app caches are files, which means they generate tons of system junk. When there are too many stored on Mac, they can cause the “startup disk almost full” problem. This is why we recommend clearing cache regularly. Here’s how to do it manually on Mac:

  1. Open Finder
  2. Click on Go > Go to Folder in the Finder menu
  3. Type in ~/Library/Caches
  4. Access cache folders and delete the files
  5. Then, go back and do the same for /Library/Caches without ~

Some resources don’t recommend deleting cache from the “Apple” folders. Indeed, by manually deleting caches, you might erroneously remove some important system files. There are two ways you can avoid trouble here: 1) Back up cache folders before deleting them (this is a bit tricky while backups eat up storage, just as caches); 2) Use an advanced tool like CleanMyMac X that scans your Mac for clutter and deletes only those files that are safe to delete. Here’s how it works:

How Do I Free Space On My Startup Disk Mac Blank

  1. Open CleanMyMac X
  2. Click on System Junk under Cleanup
  3. Press Scan
  4. Once the scan finishes, hit Clean to remove caches.

Delete downloads

The Downloads folder is a go-to spot for all the files you save on your Mac. For sure, it has lots of stuff you might no longer need in it. To see how much space downloaded files occupy, navigate to Downloads via Finder. Click on the filter icon to filter by size and start deleting the largest files.

Back up large files

You can spend hours on the most tedious cleanup in your life, but there will still be files left that are huge Mac space gobblers — and you can’t delete them. In this case, we recommend moving large-sized files to cloud backup. You can either use iCloud (Apple’s optimization feature provides this option) or go with your favorite cloud service like Dropbox or Google Drive.

To back up files to iCloud:

  1. Click on the Apple logo > About This Mac
  2. Access Storage > Manage
  3. Enable iCloud backup.

The problem with iCloud is it saves all of your files, photos, and messages to backup — which is obviously a huge waste of cloud storage. If you want a more customizable setup, use Dropshare. It’s a robust file-sharing app that works with all cloud hosting services of your choice.

Dropshare allows you to drag and drop any large-sized file to cloud storage on the go. So that once you come across a file that could potentially be clogging your storage, you move it to Dropshare instantly. The app is available from the menu bar, so it’s hard to imagine a more convenient solution. If you use it via Setapp, you also get 10GB of complimentary storage included in your plan for free.

In case you want a copy of your entire disk or a large amount of data, use an advanced backup app like Get Backup Pro. It allows you to create bootable disk clones and keeps your files protected for when you’re switching to a new macOS or moving large-sized files to a new location.

Clean duplicates in Photos

You don’t have to be an Instagram influencer to have tons of photos stored on your Mac. Sometimes, you just have to download the same file twice (or twenty times). Duplicates tend to pile up, which is not good in your startup disk full situation. Here’s how you can manually find and remove duplicated files in Photos — just as anywhere on your Mac:

  1. Open Finder
  2. Navigate to File > New Smart Folder
  3. Click on the plus button in the upper-right corner
  4. Select file type (“Image” if you want to find duplicate photos)
  5. Click to organize by name — this will help you identify files with duplicate names.

There’s an easier way to do this with Gemini app, an advanced duplicate files finder. Instead of removing files manually, it allows you to scan for duplicates and bulk delete all of them in a click. Here’s how it works:

  1. Open Gemini
  2. Add or drop folders you want to check
  3. Click “Scan for Duplicates”
  4. Allow access to the folder if needed
  5. After the scan finishes, click “Review Duplicates”
  6. Hit Remove once you’re ready to delete duplicate files.

Remove logs

System logs are plain-text files that your Mac stores to help troubleshoot macOS and app problems. Basically, they include all events logged by the operating system. And there are a lot of them on your Mac. Just like you do with caches, you need to get rid of logs to free up disk space:

Macbook Startup Disk Full

  1. Open Finder
  2. Click on Go > Go to Folder in the Finder menu
  3. Type in ~/Library/Logs
  4. Access logs folders and remove them from Mac.

Uninstall unused apps

Some apps occupy huge amounts of disk space — and it’s all for nothing since you don’t even use them. The best way to uninstall apps is with CleanMyMac X Uninstaller. The thing with deleting apps is you can’t just move them to Trash. They usually leave behind lots of caches, logs, and other system junk. CleanMyMac X picks up all the files associated with an app and makes sure they are removed from Mac:

  1. Open CleanMyMac X > Uninstaller
  2. Check the boxes next to apps you want to uninstall
  3. Delete the apps in batch by pressing Uninstall.

Delete language files

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Many apps you install contain language packs (or localization files) that allow you to switch between languages. Too many “multilingual” applications might cause the startup disk full on Mac. Since you don’t really need an app to cover more than one or two languages, you can delete the rest. Here’s how to do it:

  1. Open Finder > Applications
  2. Ctrl + Click on an app and select “Show Package Contents”
  3. Click on Contents > Resources
  4. Look for files ending in .lproj — these are language packs you can remove if you don’t need them.

Clean your desktop

To avoid the disk full on Mac (as well as make your Mac’s screen a pleasure to look at), clean up desktop regularly. This is one of the easiest fixes — simply move anything you no longer need from the desktop to Trash. Be careful with the apps, though. As we’ve mentioned before, they will leave lots of traces on your Mac, so you’ll need to dive deeper to remove everything (or use CleanMyMac X for the job).

If you’re a pro in desktop cluttering, get an app that can help you remove it all automatically. Spotless is a great choice. You can just drag and drop files off your desktop onto the app’s pop-up drawer in your Menu bar and set the rules to organize the files by tucking them into their own folders or moving them to Trash. You can create automated tasks to sort your files on a daily or weekly schedule and remove the files you no longer need without you having to do it manually every time.


Remove iOS backups

If you’ve ever synced your iPhone with your computer, you probably have a few iOS backups hidden somewhere on your Mac. You can remove those manually:

  1. Open Finder
  2. Click on Go > Go to Folder in the Finder menu
  3. Type in ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/
  4. Delete all the backup files.

Tip: If you’re missing iTunes for easy iOS sync on Catalina, try AnyTrans for iOS. It’s a great tool for file transferring that takes your content from iPhone to Mac and back, effortlessly. AnyTrans also has a native backup manager, which, unlike iTunes, never overwrites old iOS backups. So you can safely copy your iOS content, without generating any extra clutter.

The notorious “startup disk full Mac” is a complex issue. Usually, there’s more than one thing clogging your storage. To make sure you not only get rid of the unneeded stuff but also prevent files from piling up, there are a few cleanup processes you should run regularly.

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The apps like CleanMyMac X, Spotless, Dropshare, Gemini, Get Backup Pro, and AnyTrans make a perfect toolkit to automate these processes, effortlessly. While they are all part of Setapp, you can install and use them for 7 days free. Hopefully, this helps you figure out the hungriest storage gobblers.

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How Do I Free Space On My Startup Disk Mac