For example, I keep all my movies and photos on an external hard drive.

Move items that aren’t used regularly to an external backup drive. Compress & Archive – Compress folders that you need but never open.Delete unnecessary iChat icons (Pictures > iChat icons) & GarageBand demo songs. Don’t forget iMovie and Final Cut, if you imported clips then they are in the iMovie folder as well as the original folder. iPhoto has its own trash can, so if you delete something there make sure to also empty the trash. Clear web browser cache, website data, history. Delete anything you don’t need – Photos, Application, Documents.

I’d suggest backing up your Mac using Time Machine before preforming any of these tasks and please do your own research. Make sure you don’t delete anything that your Mac needs. What is really happening however, is the files are moved to a temporary folder waiting to be over-written by new files.īe careful when cleaning your Mac. When you empty the trash can, you get some memory back. However, I’ve read that on a Mac when you delete something it goes to the trash can but still takes up full memory. If you have ever used a Windows computer, you’ll know that when you delete something, it goes to the recycling bin and memory is freed up instantly. Related: How I organise my computer and keep it running efficiently How does the mac trash can work? I’m going to show you how I went from having 73GB free memory to 380GB free memory & counting… that’s more than half my memory back from these simple tips. Deleting things and clearing it out is great, but you won’t notice any difference because the files are still recoverable from the hard drive. Being a Creative Digital Media student, a freelancer and a blogger means that my computer fills up very quickly.

How to free up space on macbook air