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What is safe to delete to free up space on a Mac

. 5 minute read. By JOV

“Your disk is almost full” tends to appear at a bad moment, in the middle of a download or a macOS update. The safe way out is to start with the things that are certainly yours to delete, and to leave alone anything you can’t name. This guide goes in that order.

See where the space went

Open System Settings, click General, then Storage. After a moment a bar shows how the disk is used, with a list of categories below it: Applications, Documents, Photos, Messages, Mail and others. Click the round “i” button beside a category to see what is in it and delete items from there.

Two entries in that list confuse people:

  • macOS is the system itself. You can’t shrink it.
  • System Data is everything macOS can’t put in another category: caches, logs, local Time Machine snapshots, and files that apps keep in the Library folder. It grows and shrinks on its own, and part of it is released automatically when space runs low.

Start with what is certainly safe

Empty the Trash. Files in the Trash still take up space. Right-click the Trash in the Dock and choose Empty Trash. In the Storage settings you can also turn on emptying it automatically after 30 days.

Go through Downloads. Open the Downloads folder in Finder, choose View > as List and click the Size column to sort. Disk images (.dmg) and installers (.pkg) of apps you have already installed can go. So can zip files you have already unpacked.

Delete apps you don’t use. In Storage settings, open Applications. The list shows each app’s size and when you last opened it.

Check Messages and Mail. Years of photos and videos sent in Messages can take many gigabytes. Storage settings lists the large attachments under Messages so you can delete them one by one.

Look for a few big files. In Storage settings, Documents has a Large Files tab. One forgotten screen recording or virtual machine is often bigger than everything else you will find.

What caches are

A cache is a copy of something an app can get or make again: pictures from websites you visited, thumbnails, parts of an update, compiled code. Apps keep caches to be quicker the second time. They live mostly in the Caches folder inside your Library folder.

Deleting a cache doesn’t lose anything of yours. The app creates it again when it needs it, which means two things. The app may be slower the next time it starts. And the space comes back only for a while, because caches refill as you use the Mac. Clearing caches won’t make a Mac faster. It is a way to get room back when you need it.

Not everything in a cache folder is equally harmless, though. Some apps store things there that are slow or awkward to rebuild, such as offline copies of music or maps. That is why emptying the whole Caches folder by hand is a blunt tool. If you do it yourself, quit the app first and remove only the folder that belongs to that app.

What to leave alone

These are the deletions that cause real damage:

  • Anything in the System folder, or in the Library folder at the top level of the disk.
  • Folders inside your own Library that you can’t identify, especially Application Support, Containers, Group Containers, Keychains, Mail, Messages and Preferences. They hold app data, saved passwords and settings, not leftovers.
  • The inside of the Photos Library. Delete photos in the Photos app, then empty its Recently Deleted album.
  • iCloud Drive files you still want. Deleting a file there deletes it on all your devices. To free space without deleting, right-click the file and choose Remove Download.
  • Files with names you don’t understand at the top of your home folder. Look them up before you delete them.

A good rule: if you didn’t create it and you can’t say which app did, don’t delete it.

Clearing caches with JOV Cleaner

JOV Cleaner is our Mac app for the cache part of this job. It doesn’t empty cache folders wholesale. It has a rule for each kind of cache it removes, and each rule has been reviewed to cover only files the app rebuilds on its own. Anything that doesn’t match a rule stays where it is.

The JOV Cleaner cleanup list, grouped by kind of app, with the size and number of files of each cache.

A scan only reads. It shows the list of caches it found and how much space each would free, and nothing is removed until you click Clean. You can untick anything first. It never touches your Documents, Desktop, Downloads, Photos, Mail, Messages, iCloud Drive or keychains.

Be aware that a cache cleanup can’t be undone. The files are deleted, not moved to the Trash, and the apps rebuild them.

The app also helps with the manual steps above:

  • Large Files finds big files and old installers.
  • Duplicates finds identical copies and always leaves one of them in place.
  • The uninstaller removes an app together with the files it left in your Library.
  • Login items shows what starts when you log in.

Files you remove with Large Files or Duplicates, and apps you uninstall, go to the Trash, so you can put them back until you empty it.

If you tend to notice a full disk too late, JOV Cleaner can warn you when free space drops below 10 GB or 5% of the disk, whichever is smaller. You can also turn on scheduled cleanups in Settings. They only remove caches that are safe to clear while you are away, and only while their apps are closed.

JOV Cleaner is free. Scanning needs no account, and cleaning needs a free JOV Account. It needs macOS 14 Sonoma or later and runs on Apple silicon and Intel Macs.

When cleaning isn’t enough

If the disk is full again a month later, the cause is how much you keep, not caches. The lasting fixes are to move a photo or video library to an external drive, to turn on Optimize Mac Storage for iCloud Photos so full-size originals stay in iCloud, or to archive old projects somewhere else.

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