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AnthonyGarcia's avatar
AnthonyGarcia
Iron Contributor
Apr 15, 2026

How to free up disk space on mac as storage is full?

My MacBook Air M2 has recently shown a "storage almost full" warning, and things have started to slow down a lot. Not very familiar with how storage works on macOS, so not sure what is taking up so m...
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Stonety's avatar
Stonety
Brass Contributor
Apr 15, 2026

Before deleting anything, it helps to know where your storage is going. Here's how to check:

  • Click the Apple menu (top-left corner) → System Settings → General → Storage
  • Wait a moment for the colored bar to load. This shows you categories like:
  • Applications – Your installed apps
  • Documents – Your files
  • System Data – Caches, logs, temporary files (this can get surprisingly large)

 

The storage information updates automatically as you free up space.

How to free up disk space on mac? Sometimes a few giant files are the real culprit. Here's a free way to find them without installing anything:

1. Open Finder

2. Press Command + F to start a search

3. Click the first dropdown (where it says "Kind") and change it to "File Size"

4. Click the next dropdown and select "is greater than"

5. In the field, type 500 (for 500 MB) or 1000 (for 1 GB)

6. Make sure "This Mac" is selected as the search location

This will show you all files larger than that size. Sort by size and review them. Many will be things like old videos, disk images, or large documents you forgot about. I hope this is helpful for you when you are exploring how to free up disk space on mac.