Major hard drive cleaning

One of the key reasons for Mac cleaning is a full hard drive. To find out how cluttered yours is, click on the main Apple menu in the top left corner and choose About This Mac > More Info. In General settings, scroll down to Storage Settings… If you see the top bar getting full, like in the screenshot below, it's time to clean up some space.

It might take a while, so here's a piece of advice on how to approach it.

1. Arrange your files and folders by size to find the biggest. To do it: open Finder. On top of the Finder window, click on a square dropdown icon for arranging results. Now choose Sort by Size. The Finder will show your largest files up to 1 GB size on top of the list.

2. Arrange your files and folders by date. If you'd like to arrange them by date to find files you haven't opened in a while (maybe you forgot they were even there!), you can do this by following the steps above, and then changing arrange by Size, to arrange by Date Last Opened. Scroll to the bottom of Finder (these are the files that haven't been opened in the longest amount of time) and work your way up.

Don't forget to look at the file type distribution in the Storage tab. It might give you a hint on the folders that occupy the most space and need cleaning.

This process takes a while because your Mac can't arrange files by both size and date simultaneously. However, there are apps that can, such as CleanMyMac. It has a special My Clutter tool that specifically looks for duplicates and large files. You can download and use it at no cost for 7 days.

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Remove unused apps

Take a closer look at your Applications folder. Chances are, you'll find some stuff you barely remember installing, let alone using. Get rid of the apps you don't need and you'll find your Mac considerably cleaner and faster.

However, the trick is, Mac OS doesn't have anything like a universal uninstaller and it's pretty inconvenient. Here's why: there are files associated with every app, and they remain on drive even after you've moved the app to the Trash. You can leave them be or use the Uninstaller in CleanMyMac, which will delete apps entirely, leaving nothing behind.

Delete old disk images and archives

Disk images and archives are usually kept for a reason. But if you think that you’ve accumulated useless .dmg and .zip files, then you should probably clear them out. To do it:

• Open Finder.
• Type dmg/zip in the search field.
• Select Search: This Mac.
• Sort the results by size.
• Delete unnecessary files.

Now your Mac is free from the space-hogging files you no longer need.

Get rid of system cache

• Open a Finder window and select “Go to Folder” in the Go menu, at the top of the screen.
• Type in ~/Library/Caches and hit “enter” to proceed to this folder. Important: remove the insides of these folders, but not the folders themselves.
• Repeat 1 and 2, but replace ~/Library/Caches with /Library/Caches (simply lose the ~ symbol).
• Restart your Mac.

It's essential to clean it regularly, otherwise it will keep getting slow and overloaded with data.

Use the free version of CleanMyMac

You can go through each step every time your Mac needs cleaning, or do it all with a single app. With CleanMyMac, you'll save hours wasted on the painfully boring tasks of searching for and deleting useless files. It cleans your storage of duplicates, caches, useless disk images, unused apps, and malware — all from one place.

Try 7 days free

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