How to free up space on your Mac: the complete guide (2026)

Open System Settings → General → Storage. It gives you the big picture, but it lumps a lot into "System Data" and doesn't tell you what anything is.

For the real number (the one macOS uses to decide it's low on space), open Terminal and paste:

diskutil info /System/Volumes/Data | grep -i "free space"

Moving something to the Trash doesn't free any space until you empty it. It's the most obvious step and the most forgotten one: in one real cleanup the Trash was holding 9 GB.

Right-click the Trash in the Dock → Empty Trash. Check first that there's nothing you want back.

In Finder, open your home folder, press Cmd + F, change "Kind" to File Size and set "is greater than 1 GB". You'll usually find old videos, .dmg installers and forgotten backups.

You can also list them from Terminal, largest first:

find ~ -type f -size +1G -not -path '*/Library/*' 2>/dev/null -exec du -h {} + | sort -rh | head -20

These are your files: go through them one by one. If it's a video or photo, make sure you have a copy before deleting it.

Caches are temporary files apps create to run faster. They regenerate on their own, so deleting them is safe. On a typical Mac they take 2 to 10 GB.

We cover it in detail in the cache guide.

Dragging an app to the Trash doesn't delete its data. A UTM virtual machine left 22 GB behind after the app was uninstalled, and BlueStacks left 6.6 GB. This almost never shows up in any tool.

System folders (/System, or anything in /Library you don't recognize), the inside of your Photos library, iCloud files that aren't downloaded, and any folder with .env files, SSH keys or credentials. They look like junk and they're irreplaceable.

FAQ