How To Find Other Storage On Mac

How To Find What Other Is On Mac Storage
Mac Other Storage Space
How To Find And Delete Other Storage On Mac

Dec 16, 2020 • Filed to: Solve Mac Problems • Proven solutions

Whether you are a student, businessman, writer, or programmer, you will have terabytes of storage space on your Macbook and still struggle with the data.

If you check the storage disk space on Mac and are keep an eye on it, you will notice how quickly the storage gets consumed. Therefore, sooner or later, the speed of your MacBook will decrease, and you will have to take action for it. In case you don’t know how to check disk space on Mac or optimize it, this post is just the thing for you. It will walk you through the various options to even check CPU usage on Mac and regulate its hard drive space.

Mapping a network drive is the process of linking your Mac to a network-attached storage device. Unlike installed hardware, such as your RAM, macOS does not automatically detect network devices; we need to install them and set them up before we can use them. Under the 'More storage settings' section, click the View storage usage on other drivers option. While in the page, under the 'Local storage' section, you'll see a list with all the drives (such. MacOS can act in mysterious ways, and it can be difficult from either the Finder or through About This Mac Storage view to figure out exactly what is eating up your disk storage. A Professional Other Storage Mac Cleaner Software Can Help a Lot. Time Needed: 3 minutes.

So, without any delay, let’s get down and have a look at how to check disk space on Mac.

Part 1. How to Check Storage on Mac

Those who are using MacBook for their daily work like programming, coding, designing, photography, and other important work know how quickly their storage space gets filled. They know that even the most abandoned storage devices available in the market eventually fail to keep up with their daily need.

The thing is there is too much data that needs processing. There are high-quality 4k videos, full-size photographs, RAW files, documents, and a lot more. The data like the iTunes movies, log files, and applications will use the space.

Even if you somehow avoid all the unnecessary data, the MacBook has to deal with log files, backups, operating system files, updates, and a lot of others. The duplicated files and the cache files created in your system are also an active contributor to the storage problems.

Problems Caused Due to Low storage Space

The filling space of the MacBook doesn't only prevent you from adding data, but it also has a drastic effect on your system. It gets your system bloated, slows the hard drives, decreases the CPU performance, and even causes heating problems. If you have a hard disk, you will literally be able to hear the spinning of the drive, once it's full.

Solutions for the Issue

The only solution to deal with this problem is to regularly check the storage on Mac and optimize the system whenever it’s nearly filled. If you don’t know how to check Mac storage, here are the steps that you have to take.

Step 1: Open the hard drive

Step 2: Click on the application tab

Step 3: Now select the utilities from the list

Step 4: Open the activity monitor from here

Step 5: A menu to Check CPU usage Mac will open

Step 6: Click the storage space button

It will display all the storage media with their storage space details

Part 2. How to Check Hard Disk Space Available

If you are in a situation where your MacBook has started to present slower performance and is taking too much time to boot, maybe its time you take a look at the hard disk space.

Low storage in the hard disk increases the data processing load on the system, which then acquires most of the working memory. It hinders the regular working cycle of the Macbook and turns it to a slow and unreliable machine. So at least 10% of the hard drive must be available all the time.

If you have no idea of the space available in your guide and don’t know how to check space on Mac, here’s how you can do it without using any third-party software or complex processing.

Step 1: Click on the Apple logo on the top Screen.

Step 2: Select 'About This Mac'

Note: To check the storage on Mac with an older version of OS X, you have to click on more info button before the next step.

Step 3: Click on the Storage tab in the windows that open.

After this step, you will find a list of hard drives and other connected devices with their storage details. Look for the one you need, and you are good to go.

Part 3. How to Free Up Space on Mac

In today's life, many Mac users are constrained by the limited storage space. The SSDs are quite expensive while the traditional HDDs are slow and not ideal for the fast pace of life. Therefore, the best rescue you have is to check the storage on Mac and optimize it regularly.

Now that you know how to check space on Mac let get down with the optimization process and options you have. Here are the things you have to do:

Step 1: Open the menu that you previously used to check the memory on Mac

Step 2: Click on the manage button that sits next to flash storage media detail

Step 3: It will show you the following options for optimizing the memory space.

i. Store in iCloud

iCloud is the online storage space that comes with every Apple device. You can sign into the storage space using the Apple id and then use it to store data.

After clicking on the iCloud, you will have the following options:

Desktop and documents: If you click this option, all the files in these folders will get uploaded to the cloud storage. Only the recently used records will be kept on the Mac. You have to download the older files if you need them.

Related: Get the complete details on backing up Mac to iCloud.

Photos: This option let you upload original and high-resolution photographs and video to the cloud library. Only an optimized and space-saving version of the data remains on the Mac. In case you want the original file, you can download it from the iCloud whenever you want.

The basic storage of iCloud is free, but you will have to go for a paid plan if you need additional space. So, it best if you check the storage on Mac that these categories are using, before clicking the options.

ii. Optimize Storage

This option gives you three options for clearing space. You can use it to remove the watched iTunes downloads, prevent automatically download email attachments, or restricting the email attachment downloads to the recent emails only.

iii. Empty the trash

The data that you delete often stay in the trash can and still use the storage space. 'Empty the trash' helps you to automate the cleaning of this trash bin. It clears all the files that are older than 30 days.

iv. Reduce Clutter

Reduce the clutter option lets you filter out the large files that you haven't used for a long time. You can then select the once you don’t need and delete them permanently.

You can also try to free up the storage space manually. Have a look at the things you can do for it.

Delete old files that are no longer required.
Move files to external media like a flash drive or external hard drive
Use compressor to reduce the space requirement of the data
Remove the unnecessary programs old fonts, languages and dictionaries
Delete unneeded emails from the mailbox and junk mail folders
Clear cache, logs and download history of your browser

Part 4. How to Recover Accidentally Deleted Files on Mac

After gaining an overview of how to check MacBook storage space and optimize it, the next step will be to ensure that all your essential files are safe.

Losing the critical data during the optimization or due to accidental deletion can have a very drastic effect on your work. You might have to face losses and do the whole project again. Luckily, MacBook offers the freedom to use third-party recovery software to deal with the problem.

Recoverit Data Recovery Software for Mac

If you have lost data from your MacBook whether it's in the form of an image, document, video, or even camera raw, you will need high-performance software to recover them. Download Recover its data recovery software for this task.

Here’s how you can use Recoverit data recovery software to recover your data.

Step 1. Select the Location

Launch Recoverit data recovery software and select the last location of your deleted files. Now, click on the start button on the lower side of the software window and proceed with the next step.

Step 2. Scan the Drives

Use the all-rounder scan to find the required files from the drive. You can also use filters to enhance the searching process while the software is performing its task.

How To Find What Other Is On Mac Storage

Step 3. Preview and Recover Files

After the software check memory on Mac, it will list all the files that it has found in the drive. You can then preview the files and select the ones you need. Once you are sure of the data, just click on the Recover button and the software will restore them.

However, the files won’t be getting back to their previous location. You have to either assign them a new address or they will go to the Recoverit's default location.

Part 5. Tips Against Full Storage on Mac

Knowing how to check MacBook storage may help you to eliminate the memory issues, but its haste. First, you have to check the storage on MacBook, then you have to transfer or delete the data, and if something goes wrong, you have to recover trashed files and deleted data. It is not that bad, but it’s not something that you can do too often.

Therefore, you should try to avoid storage issues in the first place. Have a look at some tips that you can use.

Use Disk Utilities

Disk utility can limit the background Ram usage and even deleted the unnecessary logs from the system.

Prefer Cloud and online streaming

The movies and music that you download need a considerable amount of space. Therefore, if you step up for the online streaming of these things, you can save a lot of system memory. It is also preferable that you start storing the data on a cloud-based server. It will not only decrease the storage but also help to prevent data loss issues.

Keep an external backup drive

There are a lot of external storage devices that can offer you high storage space. You can use this device to retain a copy of the data that you rarely use and even use it as a backup device.

Delete localization data

Most of the applications that you buy or download will have support for multiple languages and other regional features. It is vital to keep up with the diversity but is very storage effective for your Mac. So make sure to localize data files that you don't need.

Closing Words

Apple tries to provide the very best in their Macbooks. They install high-speed SSD memories, provide support for iCloud services, and have introduced some advanced optimization tools for the storage cleaning.

It's you who have to understand the limits of the machine and find ways to deal with it. Therefore, get down to your Macbook check its storage usage and take all the necessary action to keep it optimized. Use the cloud sources the external and other storage locations that the technology has offered against the storage problems.

And don’t forget to download Recoverit hard drive recovery software. It can come in handy if you lose an essential file in the optimization process, or due to any other issue.

Mac Other Storage Space

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/Mac Cleaner /What is Other on Mac Storage and How to Remove It

I’m a loyal MacBook user; so loyal, that I’ve bought my 4th MacBook now. I replace them with new ones every time I want to. I’ve been using my 4th Mac for 2 years now. I noticed that mac other storage growing and is eating up my disk space. There're 50GB of 'other' on Mac! How do I clear other storage on my Mac to free disk space and to make it perform faster?

It's easy to clean up Mac other storage. In the following, we'll show you how to get more disk space for your Mac.

Article GuidePart 1. What Is Other on Mac Storage?Part 2. How Do I Clear Other Storage on My Mac?Part 3. How to Remove Mac Other Storage in One ClickPart 4. How to Manage Storage on MacPart 5. In Conclusion

Part 1. What Is Other on Mac Storage?

Is your Mac running slowly? Have you checked out the storage capacity of your Mac device? It has various labels right? You can see Apps, Audios, Movies, Photos, as well as Backups. Everything seems to be obvious, isn’t it? You know which files are actually eating up your disk space.

But how about “Other”? What does this mean? It can be frustrating to know that these “Other” files take too much of our disk space so that we have to free them. Want to get the actual storage space back? Well, we’ll tell you more about Other Storage first. And then, we’ll tell you how to get rid of other storage (purgeable space) on your device.

What is Other on Mac storage? Other types of storage refer to those that do not fit in the categories (e.g. Apps, Audios, Movies, Photos, as well as Backups). These Other files would include the following:

Documents including .doc, .PDF, and .psd files.
System files of macOS X.
Temporary files of macOS X.
Cache files including browser cache, user cache, and system cache.
Disk images.
Archives including .dmg and .zip.
App plugins.
Extensions.
Everything that cannot be classified into the main categories.

Then, how do I clean up the other on my Mac? Let's move into the following parts of deleting Mac other storage, especially with a free-tried and powerful Mac cleaner.

Part 2. How Do I Clear Other Storage on My Mac?

You don't know how to clean Other storage on Mac completely because it might contain files that are important. What we would do to help you is to delve into different types of Other files and how to clean them.

# 1 - Removal Of Documents That Take Up Other Storage Space

You might think that documents do not take up too much storage space. But you’ll realize later that .csv and .pages files can actually be large in size. And that’s just it. We’re not even counting images, big presentations, and eBooks. That’s why your Other storage takes up too much space.

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to clear documents on Mac:

Go to your desktop, then press Command and F keys together.
Press This Mac then press the 1st dropdown menu field.
Choose Other.
Go to the Search Attributes window to tick up File Size and File Extension.
You now have the ability to place various file types of documents (e.g. .pages, .pdf, .csv, etc.). You can also input file sizes in order to locate large documents.
Review the results (or items).
Delete files you no longer need.

# 2 - Deleting Temporary Files

When your Mac is currently running, it always creates (and even piles up) system files such as logs. These files are necessary for the system to function normally--only on a specified period of time. There are times that these files become outdated and result in clogging up of your disk space. These are part of the Mac Other Storage classification as well.
Usually, these type of files is temporary. But sometimes, they don’t get removed unless you actually do something about them. Apple didn’t make it easy for you to delete these system files and temporary files.

So, where can you find these system files? Follow the steps below:

Go to ~/Users/User/Library/Application Support/
In the folder that appears, you will see applications that use up too much space with their temporary files and system files.
Delete this manually.

However, this is not a recommended way to do it. Why is this so? Well, you might delete files that are necessary for the apps to function. The best way to do this is to use iMyMac PowerMyMac, which will be introduced in Part 3.

# 3 - Removing Cache Files

Cache files look harmless to you. But they can actually take up much disk space. There are three types of cache (the main ones)--- user, browser, and system. These cache files are used to improve the speed of your system. But once they get really big, it can turn the other way around resulting in poor system performance.

Here’s how to clear cache files manually on your Mac device:

Go to Go > Go To Folder.
Type out ~/Library/Caches, then press Go.
Click-hold Option. After which, drag the folder of Caches towards your desktop. This serves as a backup of your cache which you can restore if something happens.
Select every file located inside the Caches folder.
Drag these files towards the Trash.
Finally, you have to Empty the entire Trash.

Do the same steps all over again. However, in step 2, type out /Library/Caches to clear up more cache in another folder.

Do steps 1 to 6 all over again. However, in step 2, type out ~/Library/Logs to clear out other types of cache again.

If you are worried that you might delete necessary files, you can use iMyMac PowerMyMac again.

# 4 - Removal Of Disk Images And Archives

If you have unnecessary .zip, .dmg, and .rar files, among others that take up Mac other storage, you should clean them up immediately to free your disk of storage space.
You can find them by utilizing the Spotlight search:

Launch Finder.
Type out DMG/ZIP. Type this within the search field.
Choose Search: This Mac.
The results will be displayed and sort these files by size.
Clean the files you don’t need, especially the large-sized ones.

# 5 - Removal Of Application Plugins and Application Extensions

Add-ons and plugins of your applications are included in the Mac Other Storage category (as opposed to the Apps category). These don’t take up much space. However, it’s still worth clearing them out to gain more space.
Extensions sometimes cause trouble to your Mac device and it is best to remove them. This is a double whammy! You get to remove the app logs that cause trouble and you get to free up space too. You can manually remove these extensions one-by-one.

How to remove your Safari extensions:

Open browser named Safari.
Press Preferences.
Press the tab labeled Extensions.
Choose the extension you want to delete. Uncheck “Enable” in order to deactivate it.
If you want to delete it, click Uninstall to uninstall Safari.

How to remove your Chrome extensions:

Launch Chrome.
Click the icon appearing like three dots. This is located in the top-right corner of the browser.
Press More Tool.
Press Extensions.
Remove or disable extensions depending on what you want.

How to remove extensions from Firefox browser:

Launch Mozilla Firefox.
Find the burger menu and open it. This is located in the top-right corner of the screen.
Select Add-ons.
Look at the Extensions and Plugins tabs.
Remove or disable any extension or plugin you want.

Note:

If you are unsure of the use of a specific extension or plugin, do not delete it. You should disable it first. If your apps (or your system) works fine after you have disabled a specific extension (or plugin), THEN you can remove it.

# 6 - Removing Everything Else That Cannot Be Classified

Mac Other Storage Space has its own Other classification. Funny, right? These files can actually include the following:

Files located within your user library (e.g. screensavers)
Files that cannot be recognized by Spotlight search.

Typically, these Other Files of Mac Other Storage do not take up a lot of space. But, as you might know, a little goes a long way. If you want to clean up screensavers, here’s how to do it:

Launch Finder to locate Menu Bar.
Choose Go > Go To Folder.
Type out: ~/Library/Screen Savers, then press go.
Delete these screensavers.

Files not recognized by Spotlight are rarer. They include different files such as partitions of Windows Boot Camp. They can also include hard drives of virtual machines.

How To Find And Delete Other Storage On Mac

Part 3. How to Remove Mac Other Storage in One Click

There’s a quicker way to get rid of Mac Other Storage by removing your Mac junk files including unnecessary documents, temporary files, caches and others. All you have to do is use a Mac cleaner like iMyMac PowerMyMac.

Here’s how to use iMyMac PowerMyMac to clean up your Mac:

Step 1. Download and Launch software

Download the program from its official website. Launch the software on your Mac device. The main screen will display the Network condition of your device.

Step 2. Scanning the System Junk

Check out the left side of the screen. Select the module named “Master Scan”. Press the Scan button to start the scanning process. Wait for a moment until all junk files are displayed to you. The PowerMyMac will display the junk files in various categories such as Application Cache, Photo Cache, Email Cache, System Logs, System Cache, and System Trash, etc.

Step 3. Review and Select Files to Clean up

Select a category and preview the files in that category. Select the categories and specific files (in that category) you want to clean up. Press the button named Clean.

Step 4. Clean Up Mac System Junk Is Over

Wait until the selected junk files are cleaned up. These files will then be marked as Zero KB. Auto-recreated folders will not be marked as such.

That's all steps on how to get rid of other storage on Mac. Repeat steps 1 to 8. But this time in step 3, select the module “Duplicate Finder” or “Large & Old Files”.

You can actually remove extensions automatically with iMyMac. What you can use is it's Extensions feature. Here’s how to do it step-by-step with this tool:

Download and Launch iMyMac PowerMyMac
Click Extensions under the Toolkit module.
Click Scan. Results will show a list of extensions on your Mac.
Find the extensions or plugins you want.
Toggle to disable these extensions or plugins.

Tip: Features of iMyMac PowerMyMac:

One-Click - This means you can simply do a complete scan of your Mac in just one click. You can also clean your entire Mac device with a simple click.
Powerful - The powerful features of iMyMac PowerMyMac allows it to do a comprehensive scan of your entire Mac.
Selective - It comprehensively scans your device and displays the results in a list. You can select the display method by a particular feature such as time and size, among others. You are in control of everything.
Free Trial - You are free to try the PowerMyMac for the first 500MB of data. You will be able to experience its features without shelling out money from your pocket

Part 4. How to Manage Storage on Mac

When it comes to manage storage on your Mac, you must consider Storage feature of macOS.

You can click Storage > Manage > Recommendations tab to find Store in iCloud, Optimize Storage, Empty Trash Automatically and Reduce Clutter options that can manage your Mac storage.

With Store in iCloud, only your current files and optimized images would be stored in iCloud. And only if you need these files will iCloud download them for you. Thus, you can save more storage space.

When using Optimize Storage, you can see all the purgeable categories in the storage details. Then you can selectively manage some big files like iTunes movies or other big attachments.

You can set automatically delete items from Trash on Mac after your 30-days saving via Empty Trash Automatically: go to Finder>Preferences>Advanced, then you can see 'Remove items...', just tick that box.

Reduce Clutter aims to remove the junk files that you don't use anymore to free up more space on Mac: Review Files > choose unwanted apps or files shown in the new window > delete those apps or files.

Part 5. In Conclusion

Mac Other Storage can actually take up too much space and make your system slower. If you want to speed up your device performance, you can clean up unnecessary Other Storage files manually.

Of course, we recommend you delete Mac Other Storage automatically with a fantastic tool iMyMac PowerMyMac, and you will find it really helps you a lot!

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