When you find your Mac disk space is almost full or your Mac is running slow, you may want to free up storage on your Mac. Sometimes, by clicking "About This Mac > Storage" to check the Mac storage space, you might surprisingly find that a category in dark grey named "Other Storage" has occupied a substantial amount of space.
It's not uncommon that you want to delete the other storage but have no idea what on earth it is. In this article, we are going to unveil the "mysterious" other storage for you and introduce 6 ways to get rid of this storage from your Mac.
What is the Other in Mac Storage?
When you check the storage on Mac, you can see the used Mac storage is divided into different categories: Apps, Documents, iOS Files, Movies, Audio, Photos, Backups, Other, etc. Most of the categories are very clear and easy to understand, such as Apps, and Photos, but "Other" is very confusing. What is Other on Mac storage? Simply put, Other includes all files that don't fall into the categories of Photos, Apps, etc. The following are some examples of the data types that are classified in the other storage on Mac.
- Cache files of browser, photos, system and apps.
- Documents such as PDF, DOC, PSD, etc.
- Archives and disk images, including zips, dmg, iso, tar etc.
- System files and temporary files, such as logs, preference files.
- Applications plugins and extensions.
- Files in your user library, such as screen saver.
- Virtual machine hard drive, Windows Boot Camp partitions or other files that cannot recognized by Spotlight search.
So, we can see that files in the other storage are not totally useless. It contains many useful data. Therefore, if we have to delete Other on Mac, do clean it carefully. Now, keep scrolling down for methods on how to get rid of other storage on mac.
A Quick & Simple Way to Delete Other Storage on Mac
As we mentioned above, the other storage actually contains the files that cannot be divided into other categories in the Mac storage, so the files stored in the other category are various.
Excluding the files that cannot be deleted, the files that are safe to remove usually include caches, application logs and support files, installation files, Time Machine backups, app plugins, and extensions, etc. Even though we know what they are, it's still time-consuming and hard to delete them for those who are not familiar to do so.
Therefore, before introducing the manual methods, we first recommend you use a professional Mac cleaner app to fulfill the task for you – Macube Cleaner. This software specializes in helping you quickly and easily locate and clear different types of junk files from your Mac and free up the storage space. With this program, the whole scanning and cleaning process, including cache files, system files, and large and old files, would be complete within seconds.
Now have a look at how to get rid of other storage on Mac with Macube Cleaner:
Step 1. Download Macube Cleaner
Download and install Macube Cleaner on your Mac. The trial version of Macube is free to use for up to 7 days with no limited function.
Step 2. Choose Smart Scan to Find Files of Other Storage
As you launch Macube, you can see the main interface of the Smart Scan feature. This feature is to quickly find junk files from your Mac including system documents, application caches, and logs. Choose Smart Scan, and the program will automatically scan through your entire Mac.
Step 3. Preview and Delete the Unneeded Files
After scanning, you will be able to see the results. The junk files will be divided into various categories and listed in size. If you want to preview the files in detail, you can click the magnifying glass icon on the right side to check the location. Then, you can tick the files you don't need and hit Clean to delete them. Just wait for a few seconds for the cleanup to complete!
Besides the Smart Scan feature, the Large & Old Files feature is also very useful when you want to locate files in large size of the other storage.
Not only cleaning up the files in the other storage, but Macube can also even do more for you like uninstalling apps, finding duplicates, etc. Get this free Mac cleaner to know more about it.
How to Delete Other Storage on Mac Manually
In this part, we provide 5 methods to clear other storage on mac. Check the process carefully, and there's always one method that is suitable for you.
1. Delete Cache Files
You can start with deleting cache files. If you do not clear cache files on a regular basis, it can take up a large amount of your disk space as Other Storage. To manually delete cache files on Mac:
Step 1. Open Finder, click Go > Go to Folder.
Step 2. Enter ~/Library/Caches and hit Go to go to Caches folder.
Step 3. Caches of different apps on your Mac is presented. Select the folder of an application and delete the cache files on it. You can start with the applications that you haven't used for a while as well as applications with large-size cache files.
2. Clean up System Files in Other Space
As you continue to use your Mac, system files, such as logs could pile up in your Mac storage and become part of the other storage. To clean up other spaces of system files, you can open the Go to Folder window and go to this path: ~/Users/User/Library/Application Support/.
You may find many files that are unfamiliar to you, and you should not delete files that you don't know about. Otherwise, you could mistakenly delete important system files. If you are not sure, you can also use a Mac cleaner to help you.
3. Remove Large & Old Files from Other Storage space
Apart from cache files and system files, the size of files downloaded from the Internet can pile up to a surprising amount, especially the installation files that you forget to remove after installing a program. The overall size becomes even more astonishing after you take images, e-books, and other casually downloaded files into account.
To find and remove large and old files from Other Storage space manually, check the steps below:
Step 1. From your desktop, press Command-F.
Step 2. Click This Mac.
Step 3. Click the first dropdown menu field and select Other.
Step 4. At the Search Attributes window, tick File Size and File Extension.
Step 5. Now you can input different document file types (for example, dmg.) and file sizes to find large documents.
Step 6. Review the items and then delete as you need.
4. Delete Applications Plugins and Extensions
If you have extensions and plugins that you no longer need, it is a good idea to remove them to free up the other storage. You may find some of the plugins at ~/Library/Internet Plug-Ins (Check it twice before you know what they are and confirm to delete them). And here is how to remove extensions from browsers, for instance, Safari, Google Chrome, and Firefox.
Safari: Click Preferences > Extension. Select the extension you want to delete and click "Uninstall" to remove.
Google Chrome: Click the three-dot icon > More tools > Extensions and remove the extension you don't need.
Mozilla Firefox: Click on the burger menu, then click Add-ons, and remove the extensions and plugins.
5. Remove iTunes and Time Machine Backups
Backups are also often easy to neglect. If you have been using iTunes to back up your iPhone, or iPad, you may have old backups that are taking up several gigabytes of other storage. Similarly, there are also Time Machine snapshots that may clutter up your Mac without notice if you have chosen to "Back up automatically".
The easiest way to delete iTunes backups is to delete your iOS Files from About This Mac > Storage > Manage... (if you are using macOS Mojave and later). For the Time Machine snapshots, you can simply disable the feature, but if you want to grasp a more thorough idea, here are two articles for you to have a look:
Conclusion
In short, this article provides 6 methods on how to get rid of other storage on mac, namely deleting cache files, system files, large and old files, plugins and extensions, and backup files. While clearing other storage on mac manually is a painstaking task, Macube Cleaner, the professional Mac cleaner, is the best alternative to perform the cleanup for you.
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