How do i clear my space on my macbook air

How do I clear my space on my macbook air?

You need to change the premise of your SSD use.
see here:
Your Solid State Drive and having enough space inside your Macbook Air & Pro
Solid State Drive usage premise, or the “more space / upgrade SSD” question
There have been questions posed and positions taken by many people who are trying to use their Macbook Air or Pro’s solid state drive (SSD) as a mass media storage device, for either pictures, videos, massive music collections or all three combined; but this should not be the working premise of a ‘limited’ SSD and its use.
In which, it’s the case of those users with either 128GB, 256GB, or even 512GB of internal SSD space, that have or are running “out of space”, that questions are raised. The immediate premise of some users can sometimes be “(how to / if) upgrading my SSD” when in fact in nearly all instances another approach is the logical and sensible one that needs to be looked into and exercised.
Any Macbook containing a SSD should be idealized as a ‘working platform’ notebook containing all your applications, documents, and weekly or bi-weekly necessary files. All collections of media files such as pictures, music, and videos, unless directly needed should be kept off the notebook and on an external hard drive or likewise. While the ‘working platform’ premise is also the case with larger internal conventional hard drives of 1TB+, its implementation isn't as critical except in terms of data protection.
Realistically, you should at most coordinate roughly 20 to 25% of your total SSD space to all audio-video personal use media (picture / music / video collections), leaving the remaining amount on an external HD.
Nobody should consider any notebook a data storage device at any time under any circumstance, rather a data creation, sending, and manipulation device; and in the case of a SSD, this is more important for purposes of having sufficient working space on the SSD and reducing SSD ‘bloat’ in which cases someone is wrongly attempting to use the SSD space as a large media storage nexus.
The rare exception to the collective usage and premise of SSD use in which a much larger SSD is truly needed are for those in video and photography professions that require both the extremely fast speeds of the SSD and the onboard storage for large and or many video and photography files. However this also falls under the premise of a ‘working platform’ for such peoples rather than the intent of many who are using the SSD as passive and static data storage for media files very infrequently needed or accessed.
All on-notebook data collections should be logically approached as to necessity, and evaluated as to whether it is active or passive data that likely doesn’t need to be on the notebook, allocations of space-percentages to as-needed work and use, apportioning space for your entertainment media, and questioning whether it should it be on the notebook for more than short-term consumption.
Considerations should be made in the mind of any user in differentiating the necessary system data (System hub) comprising the Mac OSX, applications, necessary documents that both must and should be on your internal SSD, and that of the users personal data (Data hub) comprising created files, pictures, music, videos, PDF files, data created or being created and otherwise, that likely unless being used soon or often should be parked on an external hard drive for consumption, or temporarily loading onto the internal SSD.
You both can and should purchase whichever SSD size you need or see fit, but even in the case of the largest of SSD, unless use-considerations are made, and SSD spaces are allocated as should be the case indicated above, one can easily and immediately run into this quandary of “needing more internal SSD space”, in which instance a different approach in usage must then be implemented.
However it is almost always the case, that such large media files are wanted to be stored internally rather than actually needed, in which case the external HD is both prudent as well as necessary. Additionally costs per MB are infinitely less on an external HD than an internal SSD in any consideration of data expansion needs.
A Professional Example
In the case of a Macbook Air or Macbook Pro Retina with ‘limited’ storage on the SSD, this distinction becomes more important in that in an ever rapidly increasing file-size world, you keep vital large media files, pics, video, PDF collections, music off your SSD and archived on external storage, for sake of the necessary room for your system to have free space to operate, store future applications and general workspace. 
You should also never be put in the position of considering “deleting things” on your Macbook SSD in order to ‘make space’. This is especially what your external HD is for.
Professionals who create and import very large amounts of data have almost no change in the available space on their notebooks internal SSD because they are constantly archiving data to arrays of external or networked HD.
Or in the case of the consumer this means you keep folders for large imported or created data and you ritually offload and archive this data for safekeeping, not only to safeguard the data in case your Macbook has a SSD crash, or gets stolen, but importantly in keeping the ‘breathing room’ open for your notebook to operate, expand, create files, add applications, for your APPS to create temp files, and for general operation.
Slim USB3 1TB external hard drive
External Hard Drives
External hard drives are both extremely cheap and regardless of the size of your internal SSD (or even internal hard drive if the case), you need an external hard drive with your SSD equipped Macbook for several reasons:
1. Data backup and protection.
2. Redundancy for important data.
3. Necessitated ideal space for large media files for collections of pictures, videos, and music etc.
While ever changing in price, typical portable 2.5” external hard drives in USB3 run roughly $65 for 1TB or $120 for 2TB small portable USB3 hard drives. Such drives range in thickness between 5mm and 15mm, with recent improvements in storage of 500GB drives in 5mm profiles.
There is almost no premise in which a small 12mm thick 1 Terabyte USB hard drive cannot be taken along with any Macbook as an external large storage extension inside any Macbook carry case or pouch. Typically such external HD profiles are not much bigger than a deck of cards.
External hard drives are a foregone necessity for purchase with any Macbook for at the very least Time Machine backups, data redundancies, and ideally for large media storage.

Similar Messages

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    You need to copy off files to another disk and then delete them from yours.
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  • How do I free up space on my Macbook Air?

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    This is for you:
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      1. See Lion/Mountain Lion/Mavericks' Storage Display.
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      3. Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on freeing up space on your hard drive.
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      5. See Where did my Disk Space go?.
      6. See The Storage Display.
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    You should consider replacing the drive with a larger one. Check out OWC for drives, tutorials, and toolkits.
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  • How do i create disc space on a macbook air?

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  • HT1338 how does one free up space on a Macbook Air?

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    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO-mlLApEuk
    HD Space Checkers:Disk Inventory X (FREE)
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    GrandPerspective (FREE - donation)
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  • How can I free up space on my macbook air?

    I have already deleted local versions of movies and music after backing them up to iCloud. I deleted all the games too except for Alpine Crawler.
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    Giving away / Selling your Mac / Resetting  the computer to the factory condition
    http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5189
    http://www.thesafemac.com/how-to-prepare-your-mac-for-sale/
    Best.

  • How can i get more space on my macbook air?

    with a few songs and photos it's saying i no longer have space so i'm wondering
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    Freeing Up Space on The Hard Drive
      1. See Lion/Mountain Lion/Mavericks' Storage Display.
      2. You can remove data from your Home folder except for the /Home/Library/ folder.
      3. Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on freeing up space on your hard drive.
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      6. See The Storage Display.
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    Try using OmniDiskSweeper 1.8 or GrandPerspective to search your drive for large files and where they are located.

  • How do i free disk space on my macbook air

    Is there a simple way to find and delete duplicated files and folders.I need to free up much needed disk space,
    or there an app that will do it for me ?

    Well, iTunes is a start. It duplicates your songs. (at least with me) try looking for the duplicates and deleting them. Second, iPhoto is the DEVIL!
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    That's about it.
    Btw, check your applications folder and delete anything uneccesary.

  • How do I clear up space on my hard drive

    how do I clear up space on my hard drive

    First, you need to have a back-up of your hard drive before deleting files. Use a utility such as "Disk Inventory X" to see where your largest files are located. Then, and back-up before, you can begin to delete them. There are also some other good utilities that others can recommend to get an idea of what's hogging your hard drive space... I'll let others chime in on their particular favorites.
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  • How do I clear the cache in my MacBook Pro 10.9 Maverick

    How do I clear the cache in my MacBook Pro 10.9 Maverick operating system? Can anyone provide step-by-step instructions. I'm a big dummy when it comes to this sort of thing.

    Hey DrSteveMc,
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    http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14330
    Mac OS X: How to troubleshoot a software issue
    http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1199
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    3. Drag the Caches folder to the desktop.
    4. Attempt to reproduce the issue.
    5. If issue is resolved, drag the Caches folder to the Trash.
    6. If issue persists, from the Finder's Go menu, choose Go To Folder.
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    11. If issue persists, go to step 4.
    Thanks,
    Matt M.

  • How do I clear Blocked Plug-in on MacBook Pro 10.6.8?

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    By installing the current version of Flash Player. Adobe website.

  • How to delete user accounts and free up space on my macbook air?

    How can I delete a user account and free up space on my macbook air ridding of all their details/info/app/software?

    Go into system preferences and click on users & groups click the lock icon to unlock it, then select the user click the minus sign. 

  • How do I free up storage space on a Macbook air?

    How do I free up storage space on a Macbook air?   My e-mail seems to be taking up the most space?

    For information about the Other category in the Storage display, see this support article. If the Storage display seems to be inaccurate, try rebuilding the Spotlight index.
    Empty the Trash if you haven't already done so. If you use iPhoto, empty its internal Trash first:
    iPhoto ▹ Empty Trash
    Do the same in other applications, such as Aperture, that have an internal Trash feature. Then restart the computer. That will temporarily free up some space.
    According to Apple documentation, you need at least 9 GB of available space on the startup volume (as shown in the Finder Info window) for normal operation. You also need enough space left over to allow for growth of the data. There is little or no performance advantage to having more available space than the minimum Apple recommends. Available storage space that you'll never use is wasted space.
    When Time Machine backs up a portable Mac, some of the free space will be used to make local snapshots, which are backup copies of recently deleted files. The space occupied by local snapshots is reported as available by the Finder, and should be considered as such. In the Storage display of System Information, local snapshots are shown as  Backups. The snapshots are automatically deleted when they expire or when free space falls below a certain level. You ordinarily don't need to, and should not, delete local snapshots yourself. If you followed bad advice to disable local snapshots by running a shell command, you may have ended up with a lot of data in the Other category. Restart and it should go away.
    See this support article for some simple ways to free up storage space.
    You can more effectively use a tool such as OmniDiskSweeper (ODS) or GrandPerspective (GP) to explore the volume and find out what's taking up the space. You can also delete files with it, but don't do that unless you're sure that you know what you're deleting and that all data is safely backed up. That means you have multiple backups, not just one. Note that ODS only works with OS X 10.8 or later. If you're running an older OS version, use GP.
    Deleting files inside an iPhoto or Aperture library will corrupt the library. Any changes to a photo library must be made from within the application that created it. The same goes for Mail files.
    Proceed further only if the problem isn't solved by the above steps.
    ODS or GP can't see the whole filesystem when you run it just by double-clicking; it only sees files that you have permission to read. To see everything, you have to run it as root.
    Back up all data now.
    If you have more than one user account, make sure you're logged in as an administrator. The administrator account is the one that was created automatically when you first set up the computer.
    Install the app you downloaded in the Applications folder as usual. Quit it if it's running.
    Triple-click anywhere in the corresponding line of text below on this page to select it, then copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C:
    sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper
    sudo /Applications/GrandPerspective.app/Contents/MacOS/GrandPerspective
    Launch the built-in Terminal application in any of the following ways:
    ☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
    ☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
    ☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
    Paste into the Terminal window by pressing command-V. You'll be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. You may get a one-time warning to be careful. If you see a message that your username "is not in the sudoers file," then you're not logged in as an administrator.
    The application window will open, eventually showing all files in all folders, sorted by size. It may take a few minutes for the app to finish scanning.
    I don't recommend that you make a habit of doing this. Don't delete anything as root. If something needs to be deleted, make sure you know what it is and how it got there, and then delete it by other, safer, means. When in doubt, leave it alone or ask for guidance.
    When you're done with the app, quit it and also quit Terminal.

  • How to free space on your macbook air

    how do you free "startup disk" space on your macbook air , I cant update my software

    Hope this helps.
    1. Empty Trash.
        http://support.apple.com/kb/PH10677
    2. Delete "Recovered Messages", if any.
        Hold the option key down and click "Go" menu in the Finder menu bar.
        Select "Library" from the dropdown.
        Library > Mail > V2 > Mailboxes
        Delete "Recovered Messages", if any.
        Empty Trash. Restart.
    3. Repair Disk
        Steps 1 through 7
        http://support.apple.com/kb/PH5836
    4. For more on this:
        http://pondini.org/OSX/DiskSpace.html
        http://pondini.org/OSX/LionStorage.html
    Best.

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