Reclaim Valuable Disk Space On Your Mac

[Music]

hey everyone today I'm going to show you

how you can reclaim dis space on your

Mac now a lack of disk space is actually

something that probably wasn't as much

of an issue a couple years ago as it is

now believe it or not even though hard

drives are getting bigger and bigger

with the widespread adoption of ssds in

computers especially the MacBook Air

hard drive space is actually at a more

of a premium now than it was before the

entry-level MacBook Air only has a 64

gig SSD and space on those types of

machines are extremely limited and it's

only going to become worse in the future

as more and more computers move from

large hard drives to smaller ssds so

since your dis space might be limited

I'm going to show you how you can free

up some space that might be just wasted

on your computer so a lot of this takes

place inside the finder so we're going

to open up a new finder window first of

all and the first thing we're going to

do is go to our library folder in our

home directory so by default the library

folder in your home directory is hidden

now I did a video on this a while back

on how to reenable your library folder

and I'll put a link to that below this

video but another way you can actually

reveal the library folder just

temporarily is to hold down command and

shift and then press G then you'll see

this little drop down where you can

enter a folder

path and the paths you get to your

library folder in your home directory is

the till day and then SL Library so then

once you have that typed in you can hit

go and in here you'll see your library

folder so then from there you're going

to want to go into your application

support folder and in here there's a

list of all different applications you

might have installed on your computer at

some time or another now for the most

part you don't want to touch many

folders inside application support just

because many of these applications are

probably still in install on your

computer and you probably still use them

quite frequently for example I'm not

going to get rid of my garage band

folder cuz I still use Garage Band and

it's still installed on my computer but

let's say for example this wallpaper's

HD light is something that I've

uninstalled and that I don't use anymore

at all well then you're actually free to

just drag it out of your application

support folder and into the trash as

long as you don't use it it's also best

that if you don't know what the folder

is for to leave it in there cuz it's

probably something you'll need and if

you do by chance delete one of these

folders and it belonged to an

application you still used that

application will no longer function

properly and you'll probably have to

reinstall it so just a word of warning

now the next thing you can do is go to

your hard drive so Macintosh HD and then

from their library and then scroll to

the bottom and go into the widgets

folder and in here you're going to see

all the different widgets that are

installed on your computer for dashboard

now no matter if the widgets are active

on your dashboard or not they're still

going to be in this folder so let's say

for example that you've installed some

custom widgets that you don't use

anymore you can actually just delete

these and just like in application

support if you delete ones that you

still used or still needed they will no

longer work and they won't be on your

system anymore but it is a nice way to

free up a little extra space assuming

you've installed a lot of widgets now

another thing you can do is in Macintosh

HD and then Library if you go into your

caches folder there'll be a whole bunch

of different caches in here now while my

cache folder is pretty small on some

systems there may be a ton of stuff in

the Cash's folder and for the most part

if you delete anything in here it's not

going to harm your system because they

are just caches and sometimes these cach

folders can reach up to several hundred

megabytes in size so it can be nice to

get rid of some unnecessary files but

once again if you don't know what the

folder is for you probably shouldn't

delete it just because you don't want to

accidentally mess something up now you

can do the same thing for the caches

folder in your home

directory so if I go to my home folder

here and once again press command shift

G and go to my library folder I can go

into the caches folder here too and dump

some stuff that I don't need and as you

can see there's a lot of stuff in this

cach folder that I could probably get

rid of just for example in my com.

apple. software update folder there's a

13.7 megabyte cache file and while it's

not especially large at all these can

especially with the software update

folder once again reach hundreds of

megabytes in size over time now one last

thing you can do is remove extra

languages and this can be achieved by

using a program called monolingual and

you can get to this by going to

monolingual do sourceforge.net

and over on the right hand side here you

can download the program and after

you've installed monolingual open it up

and from here it's going to give you the

option to remove several languages on

your system that you don't use and this

can free up actually gigabytes of space

which can be especially useful on

smaller drives so I don't know any of

these languages here and I have no

reason to keep these on my system so I

can check any language I want and as

many as I want and then remove all these

languages and it strips all the apps of

their language files which can be very

large for all these languages I can also

remove several different types of input

methods as well as

architectures so once again as with

everything else you should always be

careful when you're uninstalling

languages so you make sure you don't

uninstall an important language such as

English so there's some ways to free up

quite a bit of disk space on your Mac

and if you follow all these tips you

should be able to free up up to

gigabytes of space which can be very

useful in some cases and as always if

you have anything you like to see me do

a howto on make sure to send me an email

I hope you found this video useful and

thankk you for watching