Let me start by saying that I’m no computer-whizz or Macbook expert. I am, however, someone who constantly had to clear space from their laptop because of all of the photos and videos I import. I just didn’t understand how so much space was being taken up when I transferred pictures, files and videos to a USB regularly.
Here are my go-to methods to free up memory on Mac. Get CleanMyMac X here: Follow these steps as you watch this video:- Check your mem. 4: Free Up Disk Space: Look out for the Disk space too. If you see RAM usage on Mac is more than it should be, then you need to free up the disk. When the main memory runs out, the system depends on the hard drive space to keep your apps going. It is a classic rule to keep at least 20% of the disk space free on the startup drive. The free trial version scans your Mac as many times as you want and will clean up to 500 MB of data. If you want to keep the app and have it continue to flag and delete duplicates, you'll need to. Free Up Memory on Mac. In case you do not have enough memory for better performance, here are some methods how to free up ram mac. Launch the Terminal application, which is the default app on every Mac. Enter the following command: sudo purge. The next step is to enter a password, after that your inactive memory will be cleared. Free up Disk Space. If you find that your RAM is completely full, but you’re still in need of storage, you can use free space on your Mac’s drive called virtual memory. This extra storage is found on Mac computer’s hard drives so that you can continue running apps. The function is always on, however to use virtual memory you will need.
This isn’t at all the kind of post I’d usually put up, but if you’re a blogger/YouTuber/file hoarder, hopefully this will be of some help to you and stop the dreaded “your startup disk is almost full” notification.
So I looked up a few ways to clear storage online, and while some were helpful, I found a good few ways to free up storage by looking around my laptop myself. If you’re deleting files, photos and documents from your laptop, all I can say is be careful. You don’t want to end up deleting critical files and losing things of high sentimental or functional value.
To check how much storage you’ve free on your Mac and what’s taking up memory, click on the apple in the top left hand corner of your screen. Go to “About This Mac” and then click “Storage”. This shows you a breakdown of the memory on your computer.
From there you’ll be able to see what’s taking up the most storage. I transferred old photos/videos/files to a USB and deleted whatever I didn’t need. Yet, while those categories went down in memory, “Other” remained quite high. “Other” is basically everything except for photos, videos, apps, music and backups. Basically, it’s a load of files and messy things (there’s a technical term for that I’m sure, but anyway).
Here’s how I reduced my “Other” storage and created 50GB of free storage on my Macbook Air:
- Go through the Mail app – I had four different mail boxes on my Mail app. FOUR! That’s thousands and thousands of emails, and therefore a huge amount of memory being used up. I removed three of the accounts and now just check them on the actual Outlook/Gmail website instead.
- Go through “recently deleted” in Photos – Photos has its own trash can in the form of “recently deleted”. Once you’re sure you don’t want those photos anymore, delete them for good. I also went through “iPhoto events” which had copies of photos I’d already deleted.
- Organise your files by size – Go into Finder, click “All my files” and then “arrange by size”. This will show you the biggest files on your computer and what’s taking up the most memory.
- Check for duplicate files – Once you’ve done that, arrange the files by name and delete duplicate files. Make sure that you’re deleting the file that you don’t need or use, otherwise you could cause some problems. I used the Duplicate Detective app to do this and found it really helpful, although there were a few duplicates I found manually after this.
- Empty your trash – See all of the files you’ve deleted? They’re still sitting in the trash can. Empty it.
- Check your messages – My phone is synced up to my laptop so every time I get a text, iMessage or not, it goes to my laptop too. If you text a lot, like me, you could have thousands of messages taking up space on your computer.
- Go through “On This Mac” – This was something I only found out this week, but it freed a huge amount of space on my computer. You’d think that “All my files” shows all of your files, wouldn’t you? Well it doesn’t. Go to Finder, then click the search bar. Type in anything at all. You’ll see that the option comes up to search “This Mac” or “All My Files”. Select “This Mac” and you may find hundreds of hidden files. I went through all of these files by searching by file type. So I searched the terms JPEG, emlx (loads of saved emails were hidden here for some reason), message and so on. Look at the file types (PDF, etc) in “All my files” and then search for them by file type on “This Mac”. I found loads of photos that came with the laptop that were useless to me and using up huge amounts of storage.
- Delete apps you don’t need – There might be some apps that you downloaded and forgot about, so go through “Apps” in Finder and delete the ones you don’t use.
- Clear out iMovie – If you make YouTube videos, files in iMovie are probably taking up a huge amount of storage. Go through your projects, events, iMovie theatre, iMovie library and delete what you don’t need. As soon as I save a finished video as a file, I delete everything to do with that video from iMovie and save the file to a USB before deleting it totally off my laptop. Movie files can be massive so try to clear iMovie regularly.
- Find iPhoto -I’m not sure why but the iPhoto app recently updated to Photo. You’d think that the update would just move everything over to Photo and have one copy of it, but no. When I was going through my apps I found iPhoto lurking there, with four thousand photos in it. I made sure I’d already copied all of them to a USB and then deleted all of the photos and the app itself. Sneaky iPhoto.
There are hundreds of different ways to find files on your computer and to find what’s taking up your storage, but these are the ones that have helped me the most. As I said, make sure you’re not deleting anything important. So don’t go sweeping through your laptop deleting everything in sight. If you can, delete everything one by one. That way you know exactly what you’re getting rid of and you won’t have any disasters. And grab a cup of coffee (or three), it’s gonna take a while.
As I said, I’m no expert so this is just what I’ve learnt myself. I hope this is helpful – let me know if there’s anything I can explain further and I’ll get back to you!
RAM is where all the active processes and programsrun. If you run too many programs on your Mac, it can slow down and you mightneed to clean up RAM to continue using your system without lag.
You can free up RAM on Mac by deleting old and unimportant folders, disabling extensions, and keeping fewer icons on the desktop. Another way would be using a lighter, faster browser, like Kingpin, that doesn’t allow extensions.
If your system shows signs of slowing down, it ispossibly because apps or files are eating into your free space. The speed ofyour MAC is negatively affected by a fully occupied RAM.
Here are a few tell-tale signs of rapidly diminishingstorage capacity of your RAM:
- Loading time is long
- Apps are crashing
- Keystrokes are unresponsive
- Webpages don’t open
Check RAM usage
One thing you can do to stay ahead of storage orperformance issues is to frequently check RAM usage. To do this, go toApplications and open the Activity Monitor. This shows you a comprehensive listof what processes are using up RAM, how much free space you have left, the sizeof your cached files, and even a bar that shows the pressure on Memory.
So, if you’ve been thinking, “How do I clear theRAM on my Mac?” you can do one or several of the following:
#1 Clean out desktop icons
The more iconsyou have on your desktop, the slower your system gets. Every icon, whether an imageor a shortcut, is recognized as a window by Mac. Remove the icons you no longeruse and give your system a neat desktop. Right-click on the desktop to displayUse Stacks. When you select this, all your icons are organized into folders accordingto their file types.
Desktop > Use Stacks
#2 Disable startup programs
There are some programs that activate as soon as youturn on the system. These programs, also called Login items, could be just thebooks you read on Mac or your email or browser and so on. But they reserve aportion of RAM with them and slow down the system. To disable them, go toPreferences and open Users & Groups. Slide to the Username panel on theleft and click on it to display the passwords and login items tab. Click on thelatter to see the programs that start automatically with Start Up. Select theones you want to remove from the list and click on the “-” sign atthe bottom of the list.
Like so: Preferences > Users & Groups > Username > Login items > Select programs > “-“
#3 Use a lighter, faster browser
You can get Mac to speed up by simply switching to an additional browser like Kingpin. It is a default incognito browser that doesn’t add much additional pressure on RAM. The really fun part is Kingpin does not allow extensions or pop-ups and you know how some extensions take up a lot of memory and slow down the performance of the entire system. So this feature makes Kingpin lightweight and fast. It also comes with an in-built ad blocker so other extensions are not allowed to operate.
#4 Remove old, unused apps
Over time, users end up saving dozens of apps withhundreds of functions. Naturally many fall out of use as they find new apps orstop using the older ones for some reason. Whether they are active or not, theystill occupy a large chunk of memory. It’s time to find them and eliminatethem. And the Activity Monitor is the place to start. Go to the ActivityMonitor and click on the Memory tab. This shows you all apps that are usingMemory and also the number of MBs they occupy. Select the apps you want toremove. Go to the top left of the screen and click on the Stop button. Thisshould take care of the issue.
Activity Monitor > Memory > Apps > Select > Stop
#5 Delete cache
Caches, too,sit heavy on RAM. If you can clean them out regularly, you can keep your systemperformance satisfactory. Avast antivirus update free download for windows 10. Users can find cache files in the Finder. Open Finderand then look for Go to Finder option in the Go menu. Open it and input ~/Library/Cachesin the search box. From the list of cache files that show up, select and clearthe ones you want to remove. Or, Press Command and A keys simultaneously toselect all and delete them. In the finalstep, you will need to confirm by entering your username and password.
Finder > Go to Finder > ~/Library/Caches > Go > Command + A > Username and Password
#6 Merge all open Finder windows
Finder windows are another reason your RAM is running out of space. And many of these windows are hidden away in plain sight on your screen. Gather them up and merge them so you can free up RAM. Open the Finder window, go to Windows on the menu, scroll down to the Merge all windows option and click it. Now all your separate finder windows are organized better and you have reclaimed RAM space.
Cyberlink power2go for mac. In short: Finder > Windows > Merge All Windows
#7 Free up Mac discs
Sometimes when RAM is fully used up, the system turnsto its physical storage – disc drives. Hence it is important to keep this spaceavailable. Advanced users often keep as much as 20 percent of the disc spacefree to function as supplementary RAM.
Often this space is filled up with old, unused datalike once-favourite movies, songs or images, and lots of other irrelevant filesand folders. Imagine the free gigabytes you will have at your disposal if allthis goes. Sometimes a deep clean is all it takes.
#8 Open a limited number of tabs restart often
Some of the quick fixes include restricting the numberof open tabs. It’s simple math. If you are opening fewer tabs, you are usingfewer MBs. Another way is to restart your system to delete temporary files thatare affecting performance. You might want to back up important data beforeattempting this. Also, repeated restarts are not what you want in the middle ofan urgent task. So plan it out beforehand.
#9 Upgrade to the latest macOS
Mac updates come in on a regular basis. One way toensure that the system runs without memory glitches is to install updates asthey come by. New versions and editions usually come with improvements and theyare ultimately meant for a smoother user experience. From fixing bugs toincreasing user-friendliness, it is always better to go for the latest releasesof the operating system.
To sum up
So there you are. These are the most popular ways to free up RAM and make your system fast. Today most Macs are armed with 8 GBs of Ram and in most cases, it is sufficient for day to day functions. However, if you find yourself struggling for space, you could try the fixes mentioned above. Fine tune your settings, delete unused files and apps, disable auto-launches at startup, merge Finder widows, and delete caches, and so on. In addition, switch to an alternative browser that keeps extensions away for superlight and superfast browsing. Like all electronic gadgets, your Mac needs regular care. Since upgrading to the next higher RAM on the same device is not a feasible choice for many, it is important to keep an eye on the space available on it and make room as and when necessary.