What does the Other tab mean in Mac storage and how to clear it. MacOS. What is clearable storage on your hard drive? How to clean out the movies section in mac storage

Often there is free space, but also on a Mac computer - especially if “under the hood” you have a 128 GB SSD. In this case, you can, of course, use third-party applications, but for good programs, and there are ways to clean a Mac using standard operating system tools.

First, you need to find out whether you even have this “Other” thing. Go to the Apple menu - “About This Mac”, where we open the “Storage” tab. As you can see, I have almost 180 gigabytes occupied for some reason.


First, we clear the cache files - depending on the computer, they can take up from a couple of gigabytes to 10 or even 20 gigabytes. Open and select the keyboard shortcut Command + Shift + G. In the window that appears, enter the path ~/Library/caches.


After this, you will have access to application cache files: choose for yourself which folder to delete. We recommend that you first view how much disk space it takes up.

Another good thing to do is clean out your “Downloads” folder. Yes, no need to be surprised, have you been looking at it for a long time? For example, I still have last year’s files and folders of several gigabytes each. Over time, as a rule, you forget about them, and they remain a burden on your hard drive or SSD.

What everyone forgets about is the old ones in iTunes. It’s okay if there are copies of 3-4 gigabytes, but what if they are 30-40? Open iTunes, select Settings - Devices tab and remove unnecessary junk. Now all this is in iCloud!

In general, do not forget to delete unused applications.

And in Mac OS X. A significant plus of a desktop OS Apple- is that it is much easier to understand what it consists of Other. Find out what's in the corresponding folder on your Mas, delete what you don’t need and free up, without exaggeration, gigabytes of free space!

In contact with

How to find out the size of the "Other" folder?

1 . Click the Apple menu ( icon).
2 . Select an item About this Mas, then - Storage.

In new versions of Mac OS X, the folder Other marked blue in color, in the old ones - yellow.

The decent size of the folder immediately attracts attention. 66 gigabytes - more than any other partition!

What is the Other folder in OS X?

Apple interprets the concept of “other” very broadly. Cupertino believes that everything that does not belong to certain file types (applications, backups, songs, movies, photos) goes here. So in Other quite calmly they fall:

• Documents (PDF files, .doc, .psd, etc.);
• Archives and disk images (.zip, .iso, etc.);
• User's personal data;
• OS X system folders, temporary files, etc.;
• Files from user libraries (Application Support, files, screensavers, etc.);
• Cache (eg browser cache, system cache);
• Fonts, plugins, extensions;
• Other files that the search did not recognize - for example, a virtual machine with Windows installed, etc.

As you can see, the contents of the folder Other in OS X it’s not always “garbage”. In principle, we can say this: any file that is not a photo, movie, program, song, or at least a backup copy, the system will send to Other. This is a kind of “Apple” humor. Everything that is not media or “backup” is “other”...

If we need free disk space on our Mac, we should think about deleting the contents from the Other folder. How to do it?

How to empty the Other folder on OS X

Unfortunately, Apple did not provide one button or function for this. Manual cleaning assumes that you remove everything unnecessary from the following sections:

—Downloads;
—Documentation(both via the side menu);
—Cache. To get to it, go to your Mac desktop, click ⌘Cmd + ⇧Shift + G(this is the “Go to Folder” command). In the line that appears, enter the path ~/Library/Caches/. It is not recommended to delete everything in the Cache folder - it is better to delete only unnecessary files. Click ⌘Cmd+J, sort the files by size and remove unnecessary (and understandable :)). For these purposes, you can use the free utility OmniDiskSweeper.

— File attachments from correspondence with friends in Messages (path ~/Library/Messages/Attachments/).

Uninstalling via Finder Smart Folder

Another opportunity to “remove” unnecessary files is to search through Finder. Exit to your desktop. Click ⌘Cmd + F to open Search via Smart Folder. Make sure the search goes by section This Mas. In field Type select Other, in the list that appears - file size. In the second field select More than, in the third enter a number (for example, 100 ). Screenshots:

Review the list and remove what you don't need.

Also, don’t forget about the simple ways - uninstalling applications and cleaning .

Removing system cache, temporary files, virtual memory files

Restart or turn off your Mac. All the things listed in the subtitle are unlikely to harm you. Trying to delete something in the system folder is more expensive for yourself; this can only be done (but is not obligatory) by an experienced Mac maker. If you really want to, you can use a third-party application

When you download several movies or TV series and then delete them after watching, you may wonder where the free space on your Mac’s disk went?

That is, even after deleting files, disk space may not be freed up. The same thing can happen not when deleting files, but when moving them to an external drive.

There are several ways to solve this situation.

The first step, of course, is to check whether you have emptied the Recycle Bin and restart your computer. Rebooting, in general, usually solves a large number of problems :)

By the way, there is a convenient keyboard shortcut for emptying the trash can.

When you're in the Finder, just press Shift + Option + Command + Delete and the Trash will be emptied immediately without confirmation.

To empty the trash with a pop-up confirmation window, press: Shift + Command + Delete.

Although I think you have already done this, so let's move on to more interesting actions.

Freeing up free space on your Mac drive

On Mac laptops starting with OS X Lion (10.7), if you have Time Machine enabled, the function of creating file system snapshots, also called local backups, should have been enabled along with it. The purpose of this feature is to supplement Time Machine backups when the external drive or Time Capsule you configured to store backups on is not connected.

In general, this is a rather useful function, it should be noted, because if you delete something really important, but it’s not on the disk with Time Machine, you can get very upset.

On the other hand, when you are not aware of such care for your files, and after deleting files, the disk space remains occupied, then you can also begin to get nervous and have trouble sleeping.

I myself use DaisyDisk to find where the free space on my Mac drive has gone. It has a simple and intuitive interface, and you can immediately see which folder has consumed the most gigabytes.

Conclusion

If you've lost free space on your Mac's drive and you can't find the reason, then you should consider doing the following:

• Empty trash.
• To restart a computer.
• Check if the space is occupied by local backups.
• Use a utility to search for large files and delete unnecessary files.

How do you solve the problem of lack of free disk space?