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

1. Mac Junk Cleaner
2. How Do I Clean Up My Mac For Free Without
3. How Do I Clean Up My Mac Storage For Free
4. How To Clean Up My Macbook Air For Free
5. How Can I Clean Up My Mac For Free

• When storage space is needed, files, photos, films, email attachments and other files that you rarely use are stored in iCloud automatically.
• Each file stays exactly where you last saved it, and will be downloaded when you open it.
• Files that you’ve used recently remain on your Mac, along with optimised versions of your photos.

If you haven't yet upgraded to macOS Sierra or later, find out about other ways to free up storage space.

Find out how much storage is available on your Mac

Choose Apple menu  > About This Mac and 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.

How to Clean Mac Hard Drive Manually. You’ve probably heard “Remove your cache” as a web browser troubleshooting tip. In fact, your Mac stores a lot of information in. Uninstall apps you don’t use. Clean out useless duplicates. Empty the Trash. If you're using Safari as your browser, look up at the Apple menu bar at the top, that has 'File' and 'Edit' and all that jazz. If you see an option that says 'Develop,' click on it. Near the bottom of the list, there is an option that says 'Empty cache.' Delete megatons of junk, malware, and make your Mac faster & more organized. CleanMyMac X packs 30+ tools to help you solve the most common Mac issues. You can use it to manage storage, apps, and monitor the health of your computer. There are even personalized cleanup tips based on how you use your Mac. Save space on your Mac by storing your content in iCloud, using built-in tools to find and remove large files, or manually deleting apps, files, and more.

Mac Junk Cleaner

Click the Manage button to open the Storage Management window, pictured below.

Manage storage on your Mac

The Storage Management window offers recommendations for optimising your storage. If some recommendations have already been turned on, you will see fewer recommendations.

Store in iCloud

Click the Store in iCloud button and 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've opened recently will be kept on your Mac, so you can work offline easily. Files stored only in iCloud display 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 (optimised) 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. Find out 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 50 GB for US$0.99 a month, and you can purchase additional storage directly from your Apple device. Find out more about the prices in your region.

Optimise Storage

Click the Optimise button to save space by automatically removing films and TV programmes you've watched. When storage space is needed, films or TV programmes that you've purchased from Apple and have already watched will be removed from your Mac. Click the download icon next to a film or TV programme to download it again.

Your Mac will also save space by only keeping 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.

Optimising storage for films, TV programmes and email attachments doesn't require iCloud storage space.

Empty Bin Automatically

Empty Bin Automatically permanently deletes files that have been in the Bin for more than 30 days.

Reduce Clutter

Reduce Clutter helps you identify large files and files you may no longer need. Click the Review Files button and then choose any of the file categories in the sidebar, such as Applications, Documents, Music Creation or Bin.

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.

Find out how to re-download apps, music, films, TV programmes and books.

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 these settings directly within each app.

• If you're using macOS Catalina or later, choose Apple menu  > System Preferences, click Apple ID and then select iCloud in the sidebar: store in iCloud will turn on the Optimise 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 Optimise Mac Storage settings.
• In Photos, choose Photos > Preferences and then click iCloud. Store in iCloud selects iCloud Photos and Optimise 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. Optimise Storage selects “Automatically delete watched films and TV programmes”.
• If you're using macOS Mojave or earlier, open iTunes, choose iTunes > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Advanced. Optimise Storage selects “Automatically delete watched films and TV programmes”.
• In Mail, choose Mail > Preferences from the menu bar and then click Accounts. In the Account Information section on the right, Optimise Storage sets the Download Attachments menu to either Recent or None.

Empty Bin Automatically: From the Finder, choose Finder > Preferences, then click Advanced. Empty Bin Automatically selects “Remove items from the Bin after 30 days”.

Other ways that macOS automatically helps to save space

With macOS Sierra or later, your Mac will take these additional steps automatically 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 Optimised Storage features described in this article, you can take other steps to make more storage space available:

• Music, films and other media can use a lot of storage space. Learn how to delete music, films and TV programmes from your device.
• Delete other files that you no longer need by moving them to the Bin, then emptying the Bin. The Downloads folder is good place to look for files that you may 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 Deleted Items 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 may display 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 won't use additional storage space on the volume. Deleting a duplicate file only frees up the space required by any data that 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 Optimise Mac Storage, find out how to make sure your projects are always on your Mac and that you're able to access their files.

Summary :

From this MiniTool article, you can know what the startup disk on your Mac is, what is taking up space on the Mac startup disk, the influence of startup disk full, and how to clear the startup disk space when the startup disk is full or your disk is almost full on your Mac.

What Is Startup Disk on Mac?

Like a Windows startup disk, the startup disk on your Mac is the disk that saved the operating system on your Mac. It is an important disk on your computer. If the operating system on the disk is corrupted or even the startup disk is damaged, your Mac computer will not boot normally.

What Is Taking Up Space on Your Mac Startup Disk?

As you know, a Mac computer’s disk is usually not as large as a Windows computer’s disk. As of 2020, Apple has improved the disk capacity and the maximum disk size can reach up to 8TB. But they are the Pro series, which are not widely used.

Most of the time, you should not worry about the disk space issue because macOS always do work online. This will not take up much disk space. However, what’s going on if you see a pop-up alert saying Your startup disk is almost full?

At this time, you should know what is taking up space on the startup disk of your Mac and then take some measures to clear the startup disk.

The hidden website cache takes much space on the startup disk. For example, statistics show that Google Chrome can create numerous cache folders after you visit some web sites. The size of the cache for one site can even reach up to 9 GB. This is quite surprising, but it is true.

As time goes on, the free space on the startup disk becomes less and less. One day, you may receive the startup disk full alert.

Besides, when a warning of Your disk is almost full pops up, it also means that there is not enough space on your Mac. It is equal to startup disk full. Likewise, you need to remove some files to free up disk space on your Mac computer.

What Does It Mean When Your Startup Disk Is Full?

When does it mean when you receive your startup disk is almost full alert?

It has two main influences:

1. You will soon run out of space on the startup disk.

Your startup disk is almost full is an early warning for you. It reminds you of cleaning up the startup disk. However, if you continue to use your Mac without cleaning up disk space, more and more data will be saved to the startup disk. One day, your Mac will run out of space and you will not use the machine as normal.

2. Your Mac computer will run slowly.

Some of you may think that your Mac computer will not be affected when there is space in the startup disk no matter it is much or less. It is wrong.

A Mac computer can convert the available free space on the startup disk into virtual memory that you use for day-to-day operations. In theory, there should be at least 10% of free disk space for your Mac to operate. If not, your Mac computer will run slowly and even face big trouble like Mac frozen.

When the machine detects that the available space on the startup disk is insufficient, it will give you a warning. This aims to remind you it’s time to clear the startup disk on your Mac.

What should you do when your startup disk is full on your Mac? In the following part, we will show you some solutions.

How to Clear the startup Disk?

If you want to clear your Mac startup disk, you need to delete the unnecessary files on it. Before doing this, you can check the storage space on your Mac.

How to Check the Storage Space on Your Mac?

1. Click the Apple menu from the top-left corner of the screen.
2. Click About This Mac from the drop-down list.
3. Switch to the Storage section.

After these three steps, you can see the storage information of your Mac disk, including the files’ types, the free space on the drive, and more.

If your Mac Startup disk is full, you can do these things to free up disk space:

How to Clean the Startup Disk on Your Mac?

1. Remove the App Cache from your Mac.
2. Empty Trash.
3. Delete the unnecessary Time Machine backup snapshots.
4. Delete browser cache.
5. Remove language packs.
6. Use Startup Disk Full Fixer.

Tip 1: Remove the App Cache from Your Mac

The app cache files are necessary when you want to speed up processes. Once you complete the process, the cache files become useless. But these cache files will stay on the startup disk for a long time unless you manually delete them. When they are useless, they are junk files. To clean up your Mac startup disk, you need to remove them from the machine.

1. Go to Finder > Go > Go to Folder.
2. Type ~/Library/Caches.
3. Go into each folder and then delete the files in it. You can also choose to only delete the files that take up the most space.
4. You can repeat the above three steps for /Library/Caches to remove the App cache.

Tip 2: Empty Trash

When you delete files from your Mac, they will be moved to Trash. The files on Trash also occupy space on your Mac startup disk. As long as you are sure that you don’t need to use these files anymore, you can empty Trash to free up disk space.

To do this job, you just need to open Trash and then click the Empty button on the top-right side to remove files from your Mac. Since then, there will be more available disk space on your Mac.

Tip 3: Delete the Unnecessary Time Machine Backup Snapshots

Most people would like to use Time Machine to back up their Mac files to an external hard drive. You may think that the backup files are save to the external hard drive. But that’s not all. During the Mac data process, the local snapshots also automatically start once every 24 hours. That’s right. The snapshots are saved to your Mac, taking up disk space.

You can delete the unnecessary Time Machine backup snapshots to release space on the startup disk.

1. Open Finder.
2. Go to Go > Utilities.
3. Double-click Terminal to open it.
4. Type sudo tmutil disablelocal into Terminal, and press Enter.

Do you know how to delete Time Machine backups on your Mac computer? In this post, we will show you different cases and different methods.

How Do I Clean Up My Mac For Free Without

Tip 4: Delete Browser Cache

Every time you visit a new web site using your web browser, some cache files will be created and saved to your Mac disk. This can help you to quickly a previous page again. But these files can also use up your disk space. So, you can delete these browser cache files to release more space on your Mac:

1. Open your web browser.
2. Click the History tab and then select Clear browsing data.
3. Select the cache files you want to delete like Cookies, site data, Cached images and files.
4. Choose how far back you want to delete
5. Click the Clear browsing data button to delete the selected cache files.

Tip 5: Remove Language Packs

Most apps contain language packs (which are also known as localization files). These packs allow you to switch between languages when using the app. They are useful, but you need to admit that you only need one or two languages. The rest language packs just waste your disk space. You can choose to delete them:

1. Open Applications.
2. Right-click an app and then select Show Package Contents.
3. Click Contents.
4. Click Resources.
5. Delete the language packs you don’t need to use. The pack files are ending in .Iproj.
6. Repeat these steps for all other apps on your Mac.

Tip 6: Use Startup Disk Full Fixer

Startup Disk Full Fixer is the best free app for you to perform a quick Mac disk cleanup. It can help you to get more free storage space in less than a minute. You can go to the Mac App Store to free download this application. Then, you can open it and use it to clean up your startup disk to get rid of the low disk space warning. It is a safe program. You can feel free to use it.

How to Free up Disk Space on Your Mac?

Your disk is almost full is another alert that prompts you to clear disk space on your Mac computer. We have published a related article to free up disk space on Mac: How to Clear Disk Space on Mac and Recover Mac Data?

If you have some other good ideas to release disk space on Mac, you can share them with us in the comment. We will appreciate that.

How Do I Clean Up My Mac Storage For Free

If You Delete Some Important Files on Your Mac by Mistake

As you can see, it is a file deletion process when you clear the startup disk on your Mac. During the process, you may delete some of your important files by mistake. Once these files are permanently deleted from your Mac computer, you will be unable to restore them from Trash. If you want to retrieve them, you can try the free Mac data recovery software: Stellar Data Recovery for Mac.

This software has a trial edition. You can use it to scan the Mac disk you want to recover data from and then check whether it can find the files you want to rescue. If yes, you can upgrade it to a full edition and then use it to recover all your needed files to a suitable location. You can go to the MiniTool download center to get this trial edition.

1. Open this software.

2. Select the data types you want to restore. If you want to recover all, you can turn on the button for Recover Everything.

3. Click the Next button to continue.

4. This software will list all the drives it can detect. Then, you need to select the drive you want to recover from. If you want to perform a deep scan, you need to switch the button for Deep Scan to ON.

5. Click the Scan button to start the scanning process.

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6. When the scanning process ends, you can see the scan results. By default, these files are list by Classic List. There are two other lists including File List and Deleted List. If you only need to recover the deleted files, you can switch to Deleted List and then find your needed items.

7. This software allows you to preview files. You can just double-click on one file to preview it and confirm whether it is your needed file.

8. If you are sure this software finds your needed files, you can go to MiniTool official site to get a license of an advanced edition to upgrade this software. After that, you can select files and then save them to a suitable folder. Here, you need to know that the destination folder should not be the original one. Otherwise, the deleted files could be overwritten and become unrecoverable.

Bottom Line

When your startup disk is full or you see the alert of your disk is almost full on your Mac, you can just try the methods mentioned in this article to free up disk space and remove the warning. If you mistakenly delete important files, you can use Stellar Data Recovery for Mac to get them back.

Should you have any related issues, you can let us know in the comment. You can also contact us via [email protected].

Startup Disk Full FAQ

How Can I Clean Up My Mac For Free