Manage Storage Space with macOS Monterey and Earlier

In this video, we’re going to look at how we can manage our storage space. On the Mac. If you’re running low on storage space on your Mac, what can you do? Where can you find all of your large files, maybe you want to store them in iCloud to free up space. That’s what we’re going to look at in this video. Let’s go to my Mac. Now, if you’re running low on space, or maybe you’re curious how much space you have available on your Mac, what you do is you go up to the Apple menu here, and then you go over to About this Mac.

Under About This Mac, we have a new window that opens up. And what we need to do is go over to storage. Under storage, what we’re able to do is see how much space we have available, and how much total storage we have on our Mac. So in my case, here I have 64 gigabytes available. And I have 245 total space. Now after a few seconds, depending on the speed of your Mac, what you’re also going to see is what is using up that space, you’re gonna see it says calculating right now. But when I go over to the right after it’s done calculating, what we can do is we can see what is using up that space. If I hover over top of it, I can see that apps are using 20 gigabytes. I go over to the left, I can see that other users are using 106 gigabytes, I have other users on this Mac.

And then if we go over to the right, I can see that the Mac OS is using 23 gigabytes and system data is using 11 gigabytes. Now on top of that, what we’re able to do is manage this when we manage it, what we’re able to do is delete some of these items. So I’m going to go over to manage here. And then you’re going to see over on the left here we have recommendations, this is the first stop that you’ll want to go to. From here, what we’re able to do is set our Mac to store items and iCloud. When we do this, what it’ll do is it’ll store all of your documents all of your items on the desktop, in the cloud in iCloud. Now it does use up storage space and iCloud so you may have to purchase more space. But also what it does is it does free up space on your Mac because there are an iCloud, now you’re still able to access them. If we look over at my desktop, my desktop is connected to iCloud.

But if we look, you’re going to see I have my images here. And then I also have screenshots here, I’m still able to access them. They’re just stored in iCloud and not on my Mac. I’ll talk a little bit more about this towards the end of the video, we can also optimize our storage by removing any Apple TV movies that we’ve watched, or TV shows that we’ve watched, I can go and empty the trash automatically. So it’ll empty it after 30 days. And then I can also reduce clutter. What this will do is this will sort through all of your documents and other content on the Mac, and delete what is no longer needed. Now, it doesn’t actually delete them without you first reviewing them. So when I click on Review here, what I’m able to do is review all of the different files. And then from here, what I’m able to do is delete them. So I have Google Chrome installed on my Mac, I no longer need to have this installer, it’s taken up space.

So now all I need to do is just select it, and then I can either show it in the Finder, I can also see where it is by going down to the bottom here. But really what I want to do is I just want to delete it. So I click on Delete. And now that has been deleted. Same thing with Brave browser, I have it installed, I no longer need to have this installer. I click on it, I go down to delete. And now that is deleted. So that’s one way of cleaning up your Mac going through the different recommendations here. We also have our different categories here. If I want to look at all of my applications, I click on Applications here and I can see all the applications, I can see the size of them. And if I want to remove any of them, all I have to do is just click on it, maybe I no longer use GarageBand it’s taken up about a gigabyte of space, all I do is just go down to delete and I can delete it.

We also have documents here. From here I’m able to view my documents they are categorized by large files, I can look at my downloads and unsupported apps, click on unsupported apps. And you’ll want to delete any documents here because you no longer have an app that is supported. So why keep the document. I also have containers and file browser. I can look at my iCloud Drive here and I can look at my iOS files. We can see that I have an iPhone backup here. I don’t want to have that on my Mac. I have it in iCloud. So now I just want to delete this has taken up 12 gigabytes of space. So I just click on it. And again, we go down to delete, I confirm and now that is deleted. It’s freeing up 12 gigabytes of space.

We can see our email Let has taken up space as well as any messages and delete those. I have music, music creation, as well as photos and my trash. And again, like I mentioned towards the beginning, I also have other users. Now with other users, what I’d have to do is log in to the other users to clean up those accounts. But it can see that there at least taken up 106 gigabytes. And if I no longer need that user, I could just delete the whole user by going to my System Preferences, and delete that user. That will free up about 100 gigabytes of space on my Mac here. So that’s how you can go through and clean up your Mac. Now let’s take a closer look at iCloud. I am using iCloud on my Mac.

Let’s go ahead and close this and we’re going to go into my System Preferences here. So I go back over to my System Preferences. And then what we do is we go over to my Apple ID this is where I can find my iCloud preferences. When I look at my iCloud preferences here you’re going to see for iCloud Drive, that I am storing my desktop and documents folders in iCloud. So this is the first thing you’ll want to do, you want to make sure that this is checked. So then anything in your documents folder and in your desktop or on your desktop are going to be stored on your Mac and in iCloud. Now there are two advantages to this, what you’re able to do is access anything on your desktop or documents from your other devices just through iCloud. So what I could do on my iPad is go over to these two folders, my desktop and documents. Let’s go and do that I’m going to go to my iPad as an example. Now I go over to the files app, we can see my files app here and my dock. And then I go over to iCloud Drive. And then we go over to desktop. And everything that is on my desktop on the Mac is going to also show up in my iPad here.

So I have five items here. And when we go over to my Mac again, you’re going to see if I open up these folders here, I have five items, I have five different photos there. Now when they are stored in iCloud, what we can also do is have them stored solely in iCloud, this will free up space. If we look here at these documents, so you’re gonna see that I have a little cloud here next to some of them. What that means is that these documents are stored in iCloud, they are not on my Mac, we can also see that on the iPad, if we go over to the iPad, you’re going to see that we have a little cloud here. Basically, what that is telling you is that file is not on your device. So in this case, here, it’s not on my iPad, and on my Mac here, it is not on my Mac. So how do I get it down to my Mac? Well, all I really have to do is just double click on it, and it’ll download it. I can also let’s go ahead and select all of these, all three of these are not on my desktop, they’re in iCloud, I can also select them all. And if I hold down the Control key and click, you’re going to see I can download them. So now I just select download here. And it’s going to download those files. Now why would I want to do that? Well, if you’re going somewhere where you do not have an internet connection, what you may want to do is make sure that those files are downloaded. When they’re in the cloud, you cannot access these particular files because they’re in the cloud, not physically on your Mac.

If you were to double click on it, and you’re not on a network, it would not be able to download those. So if you’re going somewhere, what you’ll want to do is make sure that they’re downloaded. Now, if you want to clean up some space, maybe I want to put them back in the cloud, I’m done with them, I still want to keep them on my desktop, so I can have easy access to them. But what I would like to do is free up some space. While again, I just have to select them. So I select them. And if we hold down the Ctrl key and click, you’re going to see remove downloads. When I selected this, it doesn’t delete the files.

What it does is it removes the downloads from my device, in this case, my Mac. So now I select this and it’s removing them from my Mac. They’re still in iCloud, I still have access to them as long as I have an internet connection, but they are no longer taking up space on my Mac, you’re going to see that we have that little cloud there, located next to the file name again telling me that this file is not on my Mac. Now we can do the same thing with folders if you want to just download everything in a folder. Let’s go ahead and close this and open up a new Finder window. If I go over to my desktop here, you’re gonna see that I have those clouds next to three files. Remember how I just removed them from my desktop. So I would double click on them or select them to bring them back to my Mac. But I can also do that with the entire folder.

If I go back to where I can view all of my folders, so here in iCloud Drive, I can see my desktop and documents, we can see that they are not all downloaded to my Mac, because we have a cloud, I want to download everything in my desktop here to my Mac, maybe I know I’m going somewhere where there is not a good internet connection, I need to make sure that I have all of these files. So all you have to do is just select the folder. And then when I Ctrl Click on it, you’re gonna see download now. It’ll download everything in that folder. So let’s go ahead and do that. And now it just downloaded it. And if we look that cloud is no longer there. So that’s how you can manage your space with the Mac and iCloud. Basically, what you need to do is just go up to the Apple menu and then you go over to About This Mac, you’re going to see a tab for storage, click on storage, and then you can get a broad overview of what space you have available on your Mac and what is being used, as well as how it is being used. If you want to manage that you can go over to manage here, and then you go up to recommendations.

Follow the different steps there or you can just go to your different items individually. Just select what you no longer need and click on the delete key in the lower right hand corner. If you’re using iCloud, which I recommend I use iCloud every day, it works great. What you’re also able to do is store your files or your folders and files in iCloud. So then you can access them from all of your other devices. It can also free up space, you still have access to anything within those folders in iCloud. But you do need to have an internet connection to access them. If you want to clean up space. With iCloud, all you have to do is just select the files you no longer want to have on your Mac, you control click on them, hold down the Control key and click and then you can remove those downloads. Again, you’ll still have access to them, but you will no longer take up space on your Mac Windows files. You can also control click on them to bring them back to your Mac. So then if you are somewhere where you don’t have an internet connection, you can still have access to those files. So those are some different ways you can manage your storage space on the Mac.