This is because you can easily re-download Apple Music files, and they’re technically not “yours.” In the example above, I have 22 GB of music on my MacBook, and they don’t show as being iTunes content.) How to manage Optimized Storage in macOS Sierra (Note that System includes music files you’ve downloaded with Apple Music, so you may have a lot of iTunes content that doesn’t show as being part of iTunes. Although if you have lots of photos, videos, or iTunes content, those sections might be larger for you. For most people, the leftmost section-System, in yellow-should be the largest. If you hover your cursor over the different colors in the storage bar, you’ll see a popover showing the type of files each color represents and how much space they take up.

You’ll see below how to tell your Mac to do this.

These purgeable files are ones that macOS can remove for you, sometimes even automatically, to ensure that you have enough space on your drive. You may find much larger numbers, depending on what type of files your Mac contains. (It’s not my main Mac, so I don’t store lots of files on it.) I’ve hovered my cursor over the Purgeable section of the storage bar it shows that about 6 GB can be safely removed from my Mac.

In the window that pops up, click on the Storage tab.īelow is a screenshot from my MacBook it has a 256 GB SSD, and I keep it fairly empty.

The first thing to do is to check your Mac’s drive to see what it contains. While there are several ways to increase available disk space, this article covers how you can use Optimized Storage to free up space on your Mac. Optimized Storage is particularly useful if you have a Mac with an SSD these solid-state drives have much less capacity than hard drives, so you need to be parsimonious in what you store on them. It also contains a great feature that you might not know about, called Optimized Storage, which can help you increase disk space. This new Optimized Storage feature in macOS Sierra helps you find and remove unneeded files that are clogging your drive. MacOS Sierra has all sorts of features to make your Mac more powerful and more efficient, and to help you increase your productivity. How To How to Use Optimized Storage to Increase Disk Space

How to clear mac hard drive space