May 26, 2020 Disk Utility and other apps might show storage categories such as Not Mounted, VM, Recovery, Other Volumes, Free, or Purgeable. Don't rely on these categories to understand how to free up storage space or how much storage space is available for your data. Free up Local Disk Space on MacBook-2 I am having the same problem and unfortunately, i cannot figure it out. I just bought Civilization IV today and when i try to install, it says 'Civ IV needs at least 1 MB of free disk space'. I deleted stuff and i have 48.02 GB space on my MacBook. I am getting extremely flustered.
Your MacBook Pro is running slow to a crawl, and it takes ages for your MacOS to take action? This is frustrating, especially when you count on the execution speed of your MacOS system to finish the tasks.
But don’t be upset. There are something more you can do to speed up your MacBook before throwing out of the window.
Try the tips below to speed up your MacBook Pro:
1. Update your MacOS
If you’re running an old Mac operating system in your MacBook Pro, it will no doubt slow down your system and make it harder to run smoothly and fast.
As Apple keeps releasing updates for MacOS and iOS, updating your MacOS will not only enable you to enjoy the new features, but fix some issues and speed up your system as well.
You can update your Mac software by going to App Store > Updates, check and install the updates.
2. Rebuild Spotlight index
Many Mac users have reported that MacBook doesn’t index Spotlight, or it became slowly indexing, especially after upgrading MacOS. You can rebuild Spotlight index to make your MacBook run faster. To do so:
1) Go to SystemPreferences > Spotlight.
2) Click the Privacy tab, then drag the folder or disk that you want to index again to the list of location, or click the Add (+) button and select the folder or disk to add.
3) After added, select the folder or disk, and click the Remove (-) button to remove it from the list.
4) Exit System Preference. Then the indexing will start again. It may take some time to finish.
After rebooting, your MacBook should run faster.
3. Limit Startup programs
Too many programs running automatically in the startup can slow down your MacBook, which some of you may have already noticed. So you should limit the Startup programs as possible as you can. To do so:
1) In your MacBook, go to System Preferences > Users & Groups.
2) Select your user name and click the LoginItems tab.
3) Select the programs that you want to remove in the list, and click the – button.
4) Exit System Preferences. Restart your Mac to apply the changes.
This should help your Mac run faster when booting up.
4. Manage Activity Monitor
Some progress may take up lots of your system resources, including CUP, memory and disk usage. So you should take a look at the Activity Monitor, which shows the processes that are running on your Mac, so you can manage them and see how they affect your Mac’s activity and performance.
1) On your MacBook Pro, go to Finder > Applications > Utilities.
2) Double click Activity Monitor to open it.
3) Check each tab at the top: CPU, Memory, Energy, Disk, and Network, and see which processes cost much of your system resource, especially for CPU, Memory and Disk.
4) Close the processes that eat up much of your system resources.
This should help you speed up your MacBook Pro. If this doesn’t help, don’t worry, we have other solutions for you.
5. Repair disk permissions
Disk permissions are file settings that influence the ability to read, write, or execute the files. If the file’s permissions are not configured properly, software can’t work properly. So you should check and repair disk permissions. To do so:
1) On your MacBook Pro, go to Finder > Applications > Utilities.
2) Double click Disk Utility to open it.
3) Select a disk, and click the First Aid tab.
4) To check permissions, click Verify Disk Permissions.
5) To repair permissions, click Repair Disk Permissions.
Note: Disk Utility checks a file’s permissions only if the file has a corresponding receipt in /var/db/receipts.
6. Free up more storage space
Cleaning up hard drive has been always considered as a fast and easy way to free up more space and speed up your MacBook Pro. To do so:
1) Click the Apple icon at the upper left corner, and click About This Mac.
2) Click the Storage tab, then take a look at your hard disk usage.
Note: If you are running an older version of OS X you may have to first click “More Info…” and then “Storage”.
3) Click Manage.
4) See the recommendations for optimizing your storage. Apply the optimizations recommended.
Restart your MacBook Pro and it should run faster.
7. Clear the caches
Clearing the caches in your device is one of the common methods to speed up your MacBook Pro, and usually you need to clear both the system caches and the browser caches.
Clear the system caches
You can clear system caches to speed up your MacBook Pro.
1) Click Go > Go to Folder from the menu in the top.
2) Enter the Library folder path: ~/Labrary, then click Go.
3) Scroll down and double click the Caches folder.
4) Select the folders or items that you want to clear, and click the File menu on the top and select Move to Trash.
5) Click Finder on the top menu, and select Empty Trash.
6) Confirm the delete.
Then you can completely clear the cache files from your MacBook Pro.
Clear the browser cache
You should also clear the browser cache to speed up your MacBook Pro. As there are several browsers available, so we will take Safari as an example.
1) Open Safari in your Mac, then click Safari from the top menu, and select Preferences.
2) Click the Advanced tab, and check the box next to Show Develop menu in the menu bar.
3) Click the Develop tab from the menu bar, and select Empty Caches.
By doing so, your MacBook Pro should be running faster.
8. Turn off Visual effect
Visual effects makes your screen look more pretty, but we better focus on the system speed when your MacBook Pro is running slow to a crawl. So it’s suggested to turn off Visual effect in your Mac to run faster.
1) Go to System Preference > Dock.
2) Make sure to MinimizewindowsusingScale effect.
3) Uncheck these two items: Animate opening applications, Automatically hide and show the Dock.
Reboot your MacBook Pro. This should help speed up your Mac, too.
9. Speed up MacBook with a powerful tool
Manually optimizing your system takes time and computer skills. If you don’t have time or patience, you can also apply a powerful Mac optimization tool to automatically speed up your Mac.
MacClean helps your Mac clean, fast, and secure with cutting-edge technologies and services. In addition to your familiar Mac cleaning and OS system maintaining features, it now arms with privacy and security protections to give you a state-of-the-art Mac experience.
1) Download MacClean in your MacBook Pro, and run.
2) You can clean your system, optimize your MacBook Pro by navigating to the tools on the left menu tools.
3) After optimizing your system, reboot your MacBook Pro to take effect.
Hope this can help speed up your MacBook Pro.
That’s it. Hope this post serves its purpose and help make your MacBook Pro faster.
Buying a base 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro seemed more than enough at that point. Retina screen? Yes please, Core i5 and Iris graphics? You’ll do. 8 GB RAM, more than enough. But as it turns out 128 GB SSD is never enough. If you’re in the market for a new Mac, spring those extra dollars and get the upgraded model, you’ll thank me later.
But for me, the deed is done. I’ve got this and it’s not like you can (easily) replace hard drives in Macs anymore. So at least for a couple of years, I need to make this work. And as I found out, if I stop being lazy for maybe 20 minutes a month and do some maintenance work, I should be fine. This here is my personal checklist. Feel free to borrow whatever helps you out.
1. Empty All The Trash
This might sound obvious, but the first thing you need to do is empty the Trash. You probably haven’t done it in a while and it’s probably taking up a couple of GBs. Right-click the Trash icon in the dock and select Empty Trash.
But that’s not it. Because Mac doesn’t just have one Trash can. Apps like iPhoto/Photos, iMovie and Mail each have their own personal trash cans and it can be frustrating. So go to each apps, find the Trash option and empty it.
2. Delete Language Files Other Than English (Save 3.5 GB)
Most of us are only going to use our Macs with English as the default language. Yet, there are more than a hundred languages on your hard drive. Deleting them will recover 3.5 GB of previously used up space. And you don’t need to go digging somewhere dangerous. Just download the Monolingual app and run the cleaner.
Related: If you’re new to the Mac, check out our detailed beginners guide to OS X Yosemite.
3. Clean Temporary Files And App Caches Using CCleaner
CCleaner is a lightweight and free cleaner utility for Mac. While Mac doesn’t need to be cleaned nearly as often as a Windows PC but you can recover a couple of GBs just by removing temporary files, cleaning Chrome’s cache, removing app data and more.
4. Delete Apps You Haven’t Used in a Long Time
Do you have apps like Keynote, Numbers, Garageband installed that you’ve never used, and probably are never going to? Just download the little AppCleaner utility, check all the apps you want removed, and the app will delete the app, along with any files they have lying around on your Mac. Just removing iMovie will save you 2.5 GB!
5. Clear out iOS Backups and Apps
If you regularly sync your iPhone/iPad with your Mac, old backups taking up several GBs might be stuck on your Mac. To get rid of them, go to iTunes -> Preferences -> Device Preferences. If there are any backups here, select and delete them.
Also, if you have a habit of downloading iOS apps on your Mac and then transferring them to iOS devices for some reason. Go to the Apps section and under My Apps, select all apps and delete them.
6. Find and Delete Big Files and Folders
You will not believe how much space useless files are taking up on your Mac. Couple of movies or TV shows you downloaded but forgot to delete later, duplicate files for documents or images and a lot more.
But there’s no way you’re going to find these using Finder. There’s no context there. A 2 GB file looks just like a 100 KB file in Finder. No, you need colorful graphs to crush this. And there’s a great app to help you out – DaisyDisk. It’s a $10 utility but it’s the best at visually representing related clusters of data on your Mac and making it easy for you to get rid of them. We’ve written a detailed guide on using DaisyDisk here.
Macbook Pro Boot Disk Download
But if you don’t want to buy software, try Disk Inventory X. It’s not as fancy as DaisyDisk but it’s free and gets the job done. Once installed, let it scan your drive and then navigate down your home folder to see which files are taking up the biggest space. Once you’ve identified the files you don’t need, delete them.
7. Use CleanMyMac 3
CleanMyMac 3 is an amazing cleaner utility. It costs $40 but it takes care of almost everything we’ve talked about in this article. If you have the paid app, cleaning junk files, duplicates and more is just a one click process. But you don’t have to fork over the $40. CleanMyMac has a free version that will do all the scanning and will tell you, in explicit detail, which files need to be deleted. It will only clean up to 500 MB of them though.
But we’re interested in the scanning part. So download the app and let it scan. Then from the sidebar navigate to different categories. See the biggest files on your Mac, spot the duplicate photos and then manually navigate to those items in Finder and delete them.
8. Delete Attachments in Mail
If you use the Mail app extensively, you’ll find that attachments pile up. Go to your inbox, press Cmd + A to select all messages, go to Message and select Remove Attachments.
How Do You Keep Your Mac Clean?
How do you make sure your mac is always running as well as it should be? Share with us in the comments below.
Free Up Disk Space Vista
The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.
Free Up Disk Space Macbook
Read Next
Free Up Disk Space Windows 10
7 Best Fixes for Apple Music Not Working on Mac
Is #Apple #Music freezing on your #Mac? Are you unable to play songs from your library? Or the app isn't just working correctly? Check out the troubleshooting solutions in this article to fix things up quickly.