My Mac runs slowly, I want to clean up it to facilitate the performance. I learned that I can check the storage usage on my Mac and clear up unwanted files. When I check my storage usage on my Mac, I find the Other storage labeled on the Macintosh HD. What Other is in my Mac storage? And I also confused why is the Other storage so high on my Mac. I want to tidy up the Other storage, Can anyone tell me how to do that?
“Other” on Mac storage is the collection of files that don’t belong to other groups, such as Apps, Movies, Photos, Audio, and Backups. Files in the Other category in storage are usually
system cache files, user cache files, browser cache files, temporary files, user data, disk images, archives, app extensions, app preferences, app associated files, common documents (like PDFs, DOC, PSD), iCloud files, screensavers, and files not recognized by the Spotlight search utility.
There are two main reasons why the Other storage on your Mac is so high. One is that you’ve used your Mac for years, the other is that you’ve installed various applications on it and use them frequently.
The system and app caches and user data are accumulated on your Mac as time passes. Thus, you’ll find your Mac runs slower and slower and the Other storage on your Mac takes up higher and higher.
Hey, it is right to clean up the Other storage to optimize your Mac. To clear Other storage on your Mac, you need to go to the ~/Library, ~/Downloads, ~/Library/Caches, ~/Documents/Logs folders where the files classified into the Other storage are located.
However, I have to remind you that not all files in the Other storage are junk files. Some latest macOS versions even change Other in storage to System Data, which also contains the necessary system data.
Thus, don’t delete everything in those folders to clear the Other storage on your Mac. You can feel relaxed about deleting these types of files to reduce Other storage usage on your Mac:
Browser cache files, in other words, the history data and cookies, and also unnecessary extensions in the browser settings.
Caches of uninstalled applications in the ~/Library/Caches folder. Open Finder and click Go on the menu bar > Go to Folder, then enter ~/Library/Caches into the search box and press Return to open the caches folder and make deletion.
Delete support files of uninstalled programs in the ~/Library/Application support.
Remove unwanted or outdated disk images, PDFs, DOCs, apps, and others.
If you think that deleting these files in the Other storage is complicated and time-consuming and worry about mistakenly deleting necessary system files, you can use a Mac cleaner. iBoysoft DiskGeeker is a disk management tool that features junk file cleaning. It can search for different types of junk files on your Mac and list them by type for your quick cleaning.
Here’s how you clear Other storage on your Mac with iBoysoft DiskGeeker:
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Download iBoysoft DiskGeeker for Mac, install, and open it on your Mac.
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Select your user data volume (Macintosh HD - Data or macOS - Data) on the left sidebar and then click Clean Junk on the right toolbar.
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Wait for the scanning process to end, you’ll see the junk files listed by categories, including user caches, use log files, files in Trash, all your downloaded files, and user app caches.
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Select your unwanted junk files and then click Clean Junk to permanently remove them from your Mac.
After that, you’ll find that the Other storage on your Mac becomes smaller.
Compared with the manual ways to clear Other storage on my Mac, I think using iBoysosft DiskGeeker is faster and easier.
Clear explanation. It contains different types of files, I mistakenly regarded that it covers the unknown files.