MacOS Big Sur requires an astonishing 46.01 GB of storage space on your Mac – 12.18 GB just for the update file and the remaining 34.83 GB is used up to be able to deploy and perform the new MacOS installation. The download itself is already several gigabytes in size, so many people have had to wait the whole day for the whole system update to finish downloading. Mac users can download macOS Big Sur through the Mac App Store.
Clean My Mac X runs $35/year or $89 for a lifetime license. They don’t give you a detailed disk analyzer quite like Daisy Disk’s UI but they do offer many useful utilities including storage management.īoth Sensei and Clean My Mac X are free downloads to check out with Sensei going for $29/year or $59 for a lifetime license. Clean My Mac and SenseiĪ couple more handy options that can help save time by finding junk/purgeable files, uninstall apps, optimize performance and more are Clean My Mac X and Sensei. It turns out it’s the cache for Time Machine backups (which should take care of itself before long). In my example above, I have 30.2GB used in hidden space. I use Daisy Disk three to four times a year, so the $9.99 price tag feels like a bargain for the benefits and time savings.
The software even gives a free space and free + purgeable calculation. And the colorful UI makes it fast and easy to spot really large files and folders. You can also analyze external drives.ĭaisy Disk offers a deeper look at your storage and can reveal temporary and hidden files so you know what’s really taking up your disk space. It provides an interactive UI that’s as functional as it is beautiful and you can preview and delete files directly within the app. While using Finder and About This Mac are helpful, my favorite approach to tidying things up is with the visual drive analyzer Daisy Disk ($9.99). You also only get access to your Mac’s internal drive hereĭigging deeper to free up Mac storage Daisy Disk.Notably, Apple does not give access to remove data from the System and Other categories here.After working through any recs, you can click on more locations/apps in the left-hand sidebar to see and in some cases remove files and data right there (you may have to open specific apps for apps like Photos).Use iCloud, Empty Trash automatically, Reduce Clutter etc.The first thing you’ll see is a list of recommendations to free up storage.Click Manage to the right of your Mac’s HD.
However, with Big Sur that’s not around anymore but there is a “Recents” option.