How to Find and Delete Large Files on Your Mac
Quick Linkscheck the Most Likely Places Find and Clean up Large Files the Easy Way Find Large Files Manually Use a Third-Party Tool for Even Better Control...
Quick Links
Freeing up disk space on a full hard drive can be difficult, especially when it's full of small files. However, there are some excellent tools for macOS that let you find the files taking up the most space and delete the ones you don't need. Ready to get your disk cleaned up?
Check The Most Likely Places
Most of your files will only be in a couple of folders. The Downloads is one of them, and a lot of people fill it up and forget to empty it, but files are hiding in places you wouldn't expect. One such place that can take up a lot of space is the folder where iTunes saves backups of your iPhone or iPad. That folder is located here:
~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup
Depending on how big your device is, and how often you back up, these backup files can take up tens of gigabytes.
The Trash folder in macOS also can take up quite a bit of space if you haven't emptied it in a while, so it's worth taking a look to see if you're still storing some large files.
Must Read
Find and Clean Up Large Files the Easy Way
The easiest tool to use to clean up large and old files is Clean My Mac X, which has an entire module called "Large & Old Files" that can be used to clean up all the huge junk on your Mac.
And while you can manually find and delete large files, there is also a lot of system junk and temporary caches that can take up a lot of space---and are often hidden in system folders you don't want to touch. This is where an automated tool like Clean My Mac X comes in handy.
When you launch the app, it performs a scan of your drive, looking in those junk and cache folders that you may miss in Disk Inventory. It then clears them out for you automatically.
CleanMyMac also has some other useful tools, such as an Uninstaller for cleaning up old applications, maintenance scripts, and a shredder for securely deleting files. It also has a tab that lets you view large files, albeit in a list view rather than the partitioned interfaces of Disk Inventory or DaisyDisk.
Marcus Vance is a cybersecurity auditor and technology writer dedicated to educating the public about online safety, data privacy regulations, enterprise security, and emerging cyber threats.
