What Is Other Storage On Mac And How To Clean It?

How frustrating it is when you have deleted all the photos, videos and movies that you could, and still your Mac shows the message “Your startup disk is full”! Well, we get you but don’t be disheartened. You can make space by managing the Other Storage on Mac. Read this article to find out about Other storage on Mac in detail.

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What is Other Storage On Mac?

Let us begin with understanding what is other storage on Mac? In a nutshell, the Other storage contains all the files that macOS can’t fit into standard categories, such as Apps, Documents, Photos, Videos, or Audio. This Other storage can fill up real fast with cached, temp files and other file types. However, you must know that not all the files present in Other storage are bloatware or garbage. Therefore, you must clean them with care.

Optimizing Other storage on Mac is a great way to make some extra room on your computer. But remember, if unknowingly you delete important files, that might cause some serious problems with your system’s operations and result in apps not performing properly. That is why it is important to know which files are there in the Other storage before you start your cleaning mission.

Other Storage on Mac contains the following file types:

• macOS System and temporary files
• Cached files from the browser, system, and user caches
• App plugins, extensions and fonts
• Disk images like ZIP and DG files
• Files such as PSD or PDF documents
• Personal user data
• Files that are not recognized by Spotlight search
• User library files such as screensavers, iCloud files, or Application support files

How can you check disk space on Mac?

Here, have a look at the steps to check disk space on Mac:

• In the top-left corner of your desktop, look for the Apple icon. Click on it. Now, select “About This Mac”.
• You will see the Storage tab. Select it. This tab will show you storage sorted by file types, so you can have an idea of what’s on your Mac storage.

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How to locate Other Storage?

Now, you know how to check the available storage on Mac. It’s time to locate and manage the Other storage on Mac. In the storage tab, you can check for the file type and space consumed by each type by just hovering over each colour.

Note: In the newer macOS version, Other storage is referred to as “Other Volumes in Container”.

Besides, you can further access Other Storage by checking what’s there in the Library folder on your Mac or Macbook. Here’s how to do it:

• Open Finder and then select Go from the menu.

• A dropdown menu will appear. Now, hold the “Option Key” from the keyboard and click “Library” from the dropdown menu.

• (Note: Alternatively, click on the “Go to folder” from the same dropdown menu and enter ~/Library to open the Library folder)

• The Library folder will open now, and you can see a lot of files and folders, most of which are categorized as “Other”.

• Spend some time in the folder to see what you want to keep and what you want to remove.

How to delete Other Storage on Mac?

So now you have an idea of how to find Other storage, let us now see- how can you remove files from Other storage to make more space. But be very careful when deleting files manually because you can’t take the risk to lose important files. If you are not sure, what a particular file or folder does, it’s better to leave it untouched or have proper research before playing with it.

Here’s how to get rid of unnecessary files from Other storage on Mac:

• Go to the Finder and open New Finder Window by clicking on File. Alternatively, use the shortcut Cmd + N to open a New Finder Window.

• Now, press the shortcut Cmd + Shift + G to open the Go to Folder option from the Go dropdown menu. Once the folder gets opened, enter the command ~/Library to open the Library Folder.

• You can also visit ~/Downloads, ~/Library/Caches, ~/Documents/Logs to look for files that are of no use to you.
• Right-click on the files and folders that you wish to delete and then select “Move to Trash”.

• Once you are done deleting all the unneeded files, empty the Trash folder and then Restart your Mac or Macbook.

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