Briefly said, the ‘Other’ storage on a Mac is made up of several file kinds that don’t fit into any specific storage category (like videos, photos, music, apps, or mail). Junk files and personal files are also included in the ‘Other’ category.
To be more specific, it may include files of the following types:.pdf,.psd,.doc, browser caches, voice files, locally stored message media files, system caches, archive files like.zip and.dmg disc images, fonts, extensions, app plugins, and other files that don’t fit into the aforementioned categories.
These “Other” items can take up a lot of space on the hard drive; by cleaning out the “Other” folder on our Mac, we were able to reclaim an incredible 26GB of space!
How to Find out What’s Using up Your Mac’s “other” Storage”
Find out what’s using space on your hard disc, even in the “Other” category, by following these steps:
- Activate the Apple Menu.
- Consider This Mac
- Toggle Storage
- Holding on to A Mac
You can view a list of all the storage space on your hard disc as well as how much space each sort of file is using up here. A bar with various colored portions, each of which represents a distinct storage category, will be displayed. It’s possible that you’ll need to wait while the system calculates these portions.
You can view how much space is being used by system files, programs, photographs, and videos. The ‘Other’ segment often takes up between 10 and 40% of your used disc space, making up the majority of the used space.
Utilize the sophisticated macOS tools to learn more about what’s using your storage:
1. Select the Manage button under the Storage tab.
highlighted storage window manage button
2. To reach any category, use the panel on the left. The window for recommendations will appear first.
window with recommendations
Explore the site to learn how to make the most of your storage. Setting up your Trash settings from here is a great idea. The Empty Bin Automatically setting is a wonderful example of how to periodically free up storage.
Also: The Top Ten Mac-Compatible Games.
On a Mac, how Do I Remove “other” Storage?
Before diving deeper into the fundamentals of storage management, it’s important to keep in mind that, as of macOS Sierra, files are categorized differently than they were in earlier releases of the operating system. Therefore, cleaning out files in “Other” will be much easier for you if you’re using the most recent version of macOS Monterey.
Important
- All of the files in the “Other” category cannot be deleted.
- Use this procedure to tidy up the “Other” category:
- anywhere on your desktop by clicking.
- Hit Command + F.
- choosing the This Mac tab
- Launch the primary drop-down menu.
- Select Other
- Look for and select File Extension and File Size
- Input OK.
- . Next, use the search bar to look for PDFs, Pages, DMG, or CSV files by typing their extensions.
- Delete all unnecessary information.
Get Rid of The Temporary Files in The “other” Storage.
Temporary files: What are they? Well, without these, macOS just won’t function. When any software is launched on the macOS operating system, temporary files are created to carry out a number of essential tasks. These files are created by the operating system, however, they quickly become out of date. Instead of being automatically erased, these files are placed in the ‘Other’ category.
To maximize storage and prevent having to deal with a slow Mac, we advise you to frequently delete temporary files from the “Other” area. Use these two techniques to accomplish this:
1. how To Locate and Delete Temporary Files in Mac’s “other” Folder
Choose Go > Go to Folder from the menu bar in Finder.
Enter “/Library”
Investigate Application Support
Temporary files are located in the system subdirectory called Application Support. For instance, past device backups can be found under the MobileSync folder. Examine the contents of this folder and remove any temporary files you know you won’t need in the future.
2. how To Locate and Remove Cache in Mac’s “other”
Cache files of various kinds might squander disc space. Here is how to manually remove cache files from the “Other” category:
- Choose Go > Go to Folder from the menu bar in Finder.
- Enter “/Library”
- To create a backup, locate a Caches folder and copy all of its contents to the desktop.
- Delete the initial Caches folder.
- Clean out your trash can.
3. Getting Rid of Outdated Time Machine Backups
Follow these steps to erase previous Time Machine backups:
Connect your Mac to your backup disc.
Enter Time Machine by clicking on the Time Machine symbol in the Menu Bar.
Observe: If the Time Machine isn’t pinned to the menu bar: select the box next to “Show Time Machine in the Menu Bar” under “System Preferences” — “Time Machine.”
3. Select one backup to delete from those in your collection.
4. In the Finder window, click the Gear icon.
5. Select “Delete Backup”
6. Verify your action and enter your administrator password.
How to Get Rid of Files You Download
Large files can quickly fill up the Downloads folder. Particularly, the various DMG files that are left over after an app is installed have the potential to use a significant amount of free storage space over time.
Let’s go over two techniques for deleting unnecessary downloads:
- Launch Finder, then select Downloads.
- Go through the documents
- Control-click on any documents that are unnecessary.
- Select Move to Bin.
- Alternately, employ the macOS storage management tool:
- Go to About This Mac by clicking the Apple logo.
- Navigate to Storage and then select Manage.
- Select Downloads from the Documents area.
- Hit the Delete button after marking the files you don’t require.
Also: 12 Mac Life Hacks You Simply Cannot Live Without!
How to Remove Disc Images and Archives from Mac’s “other” Folder
File types for disc images are also kept under “Other.” They are not part of the system files. Users are the only ones who download them. Because of this, you must manually clear “Othe” disc images (DMG files) and archives (ZIP files). These “Other” file types can be found here:
Type “.zip” or “.dmg” into the search bar in the Finder window.
selecting Search This Mac
To quickly locate and remove the largest documents, you can also sort the documents by size.
‘Other’ files should be automatically deleted.
Use the Smart Uninstaller program to scan and remove browser add-ons as well. Instead of using multiple web browsers, you may accomplish it all from one tab. In addition, you can look over each item’s description on the list.
Using Smart Uninstaller, instantly remove browser add-ons:
- Access Smart Uninstaller
- Push “Start Scan”
- Await the scan’s results.
- Click on Browser Extensions
- Check the extensions you want to get rid of.
- the Remove Selected button
- Remove application plugins and extensions from Ma’s “Other” storage
‘Other’ is another category that may be used to group app plugins and extensions. You must remove superfluous extensions from your web browser in order to get rid of them. Although it takes a lot of time, it would be ideal to complete this in each browser you use.
Activate your browser
Locate the add-on, plugin, tab panel, or tools.
Pick the add-ons you no longer use and delete them.
Get rid of the iTunes device backups
Files that be classified as “Other” include device backups. You might want to try deleting the iTunes device backups of your previous iPhone or iPad if you recently switched to a new iOS device. You’ll be shocked by how much disc space these files may consume.
Remove everything else from Mac’s “Other” folder.
You can uninstall screensavers from the “Other” area in addition to the previously mentioned processes. Even though they often don’t occupy much room, every little bit counts.
- Removing screensavers:
- Launch Finder and choose Go > visit the folder
- Input the path /Library/Screen Savers.
- Hit Go
Move any screensavers you don’t want to the Trash by choosing them.
I hope you now know a lot more about how to get your Mac’s excess storage back. Even if you may manually clean all of these files, it might be tedious and time-consuming. The finest cleaners for Mac can complete the task with only a few clicks and even automate cleaning processes. Getting one can help you save a lot of time and prevent you from deleting things from your hard disc that you still use, like system files.