In case you didn’t know it yet, your Mac has an Other storage category that normally shouldn’t concern you, but that you can choose to clean up if you need extra space on your computer. Basically, this category is made up of plug-ins, caches, and documents that your OSX stores. The files can’t harm your Mac in any way, nor are they wasteful to its system. In its ideal condition, the Other category should actually help your computer be more efficient. Still, sometimes, when your general storage is low, they can do more harm than good by additionally clogging your Mac. Which is why today, we’re going to teach you how to clean up Other storage on Mac.
Clean Up Other Storage on Mac Using These 5 Techniques
#First Technique
The first way in which you can clean up the Other storage on your Mac is to go to the Finder option and press the key combination Cmd + Shift + G. This will open a number of folders, from which you’ll have to go to ~/Downloads, ~/Library/Caches, and ~/Documents/Logs. These are the main folders where you can find things such as downloads, installations, .dmg or pkg files, and so on. Every file that you consider unnecessary out of these folders, you can delete.
#Second Technique
If you think the technique above will take too long to apply, there’s another thing that you can do to clean up the Other storage on Mac faster and easier. This involves installing a program called Clear Disk. This tool can help you clear the things you don’t want to keep in your Other storage in no time.
#Third Technique
Yet another tip on how to get rid of Other storage on Mac is to use Smart Folder Finder. What you have to do is press Cmd + F when you’re on the This Mac page. Then, select the folder named Other. This will open a window where you’ll be able to find an option called File size. After making sure that option is ticked, click OK and specify the size that you want the files to have. You’ll get a list of files that you can browse through and delete anything that seems useless. This technique also takes a bit of time, but it’s an effective way to clean up the Other storage on any Mac.
#Fourth Technique
In some cases, if you haven’t done what is called a clean reinstallation in a long time, your Mac collects large folders full of system files for certain applications. These files are stored in Other, clogging the space even further. The only way to make sure your disk will get cleared is to reinstall the respective apps. There’s a program that can help you do that, which is called App Cleaner. You can use this tool and delete service files. This will allow you to launch your applications as if you’ve just installed them.
#Fifth Technique
While most people are able to clear their Other storage on Mac using one of the fourth techniques above (or a combination of them), for some people this is either not enough, or not working properly. If you’ve tried the options above and you’re not entirely satisfied with them, there’s one more thing you can try. This involves taking a look at the hard drive on your Mac and check which are the folders and files that take up a lot of your memory. Remember that some files might be hidden, which is why sometimes you fail to understand what’s occupying all that memory on your Mac.
Since cleaning the files on your hard drive manually would be too complicated and time-consuming, we recommend installing the Disk Expert app. This app will scan your hard drive and identify the largest folders and files. Then, it will delete those that it finds unnecessary, so that you don’t have to. You’ll be able to see a visual representation of your hard drive space usage in the shape of a sunburst diagram. The diagram will show you where the bulkiest content is hiding.
Final Thoughts
Whenever you need some extra space on your Mac, we advise taking a look at your Other storage and checking if you can find things that you have no use for. We hope today’s 5 Mac Other storage cleanup techniques will help you free some much-needed space on your computer. Remember that if you don’t need any additional space, you shouldn’t concern yourself with the files stored on the Other partition of your Mac.
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