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.

Similar Messages

  • How much usable "space" does a MacBook Air start with?

    I am contemplating purshasing a MacBook air and would like to know how much "useable" space it starts with. I know there are two options for storage (128GB and 256GB) but I would like to know how much of that is left after a base installational of Mavericks.
    Also, is there a resource that will tell me how much space common apps will take up? (Numbers, Pages, etc)
    Thank you

    reese2147
       I am contemplating purshasing a MacBook air and would like to know how much "useable" space it starts with.
    A new in box 128gig Air will read 121gig+ free out of box
    same for a 256gig ,   248gig free +/-

  • Need free space on my macbook air hard drive

    hi,
    I am reasonably new to owning a macbook, so forgive me this is a stupid problem to fix.
    i have filled the hard drive on my mac with music for itunes, now i want to use my mac for work i need the space to save files.
    I have deleted all the music from itunes, and within the itunes media folder in finder, moved them all to trash (about 30gb of music!) it came up with a box to enter a password, did that, then low and behold the trash folder is empty.
    Look at the space left on my mac now, expecting it to be 30gb emptier, and its not, i still have the same amount of space.
    Does any one know how to fix the problem as the files dont appear in the finder now and i am struggling to save doucments!
    thanks,

    [EDIT: Please heed this warning below (in red)! Thanks.]
    WAIT: My bad!  --Hold on (for a moment) before you proceed, as this would also eliminate any backups you might have, along with any "versions" I guess, so you should decide if that is what you really want first.
    [EDITed: by Frank.]
    a) open up Finder,
    b) locate your iTunes Library folder where all the music was before,
    c) next select its parent folder, and enter Time Machine,
    d) make sure that the selected folder is still the correct one. 
    From there, likely positioned near the center of the Finder toolbar you should find (and) then click the (smart) button sporting a cogwheel and a drop-down arrow, from which you may pick "Delete All Backups of ...". 
    Hope this helps.

  • How to free up storage on macbook air?

    My old mac recently crashed and in order for me not to lose all of my data I had to have my old hard drive completely transfered to my new Macbookair. What I didn't know was that I had only 4 GB of memory and that my hard drive was almost completely full after everything was transfered. I can't even backup my iphone/update the software because my computer does not have enough space.
    I want to uninstall programs that are of no use to me but I am afraid to uninstall the wrong ones. Is there a way for me to see what I am using and what I am not?

    May I suggest you perform some "disk forensics" first. You may want to see if there is information (data), or Local Backups taking up space that you can delete or transfer to an external disk for archiving.
    First, take a look at "about this mac", and click "more info" and look under rhe "storage" tab, to see if Local Backups are consuming space. If you have Time Machine enabled, and it's been a while suince you have synced, the space taken up can be considerable. Just turn off Time Machine for a day or so, or perform a sync to rid the computer these files.
    Also take a look at an app like Grand Perspective. It will let you identify the space hogs. You can then decide if the data files in your documents folder are worth of sidelining to an external disk.

  • 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.

  • HT3680 How do I free up space on my MacBook Air Hard Drive?

    How do I free up space on my MacBook Air Hard Drive?

    You need to copy off files to another disk and then delete them from yours.
    OmniDisksweeper can help you find what's hogging your disk space.

  • 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 do I free up space on my Macbook Air?

    How to free up space on my macbook air?

    This is for you:
    OSX Tips
    Where did my Disk Space go?

  • 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. 

  • HT1848 I'm trying to sync my ipad mini with itunes and i get an error message '' there is no free space on your ipad mini''..... any ideas on how to empty some space on ipad mini manually? currently i run on 6.0.2

    I'm trying to sync my ipad mini with itunes and i get an error message '' there is no free space on your ipad mini''..... any ideas on how to empty some space on ipad mini manually? currently i run on 6.0.2

    iOS device backups are stored in your iTunes library.
    Move your iTunes library to an external drive.

  • How much does it cost to replace your macbook air aluminium body?

    How much does it cost to replace your macbook air aluminium body?

    You have to take the computer to the Apple store and get an estimate.
    Best.

  • How do you pair an Iphone 5 to your Macbook Air "11 inch?"

    How do you pair an Iphone 5 to your Macbook Air "11 inch?"

    No data can be shared by, "pairing" (Bluetooth) an iPhone with your Mac.
    If you need to sync data, use iTunes or iCloud.

  • How to find remaining free space in your schema

    Hi
    I am new to Oracle hence this question..
    What is the command that would help me know how much percent of space allocated to my schema has been used and also how to find remaining amount of space in bits or bytes or whatever from SQL or any where... I am not a database admin (fyi)
    Appreciate ur help in this reg
    Thanx
    Kris

    Kris, free space is not assigned to a schema in Oracle per say, but it you mean "how can I see how much of their quota a user has used?" then the following should help.
    You can find quotas in dba_ts_quotas (also user version)
    You can find how much space has been used in dba_extents (also user_extents)
    You should be able to write a query that compared the sum of the used space for a tablespace to the quota for the tablespace. Try the following query (notice how DBA's are treated)
    select q.username, q.tablespace_name,
    q.bytes as Quota, e.spcused as Used,
    round(q.bytes/e.spcused * 100,2) as Percentage
    from dba_ts_quotas q,
    (select tablespace_name, owner, sum(bytes) as spcused
    from dba_extents
    group by tablespace_name, owner
    ) e
    where q.tablespace_name = e.tablespace_name
    and q.username = e.owner
    If you are actually interested in how much free space is left in a tablespace you can look at dba_free_space (user_free_space), but the value returned is not adjusted for the quota limitation. You need the query above for that.
    HTH -- Mark D Powell --

  • How to decrease the storage in macbook air

    how to decrease the storage in macbook air ?

    you mean decrease all the files filling your Air?
    See here for answer about the OTHER which is taking up space:
    http://pondini.org/TM/30.html
    and here:
    http://pondini.org/OSX/DiskSpace.html
    See Kappys excellent note on the rest of “other” files taking up your space:
    What is "Other" and What Can I Do About It?
    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 never be put in the position of considering “deleting things” on your macbook SSD in order to ‘make space’.
    Professionals who create and import very large amounts of data have almost no change in the available space on their computers internal HD 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 HD crash, or gets stolen, but importantly in keeping the ‘breathing room’ open for your computer to operate, expand, create files, add applications, for your APPS to create temp files, and for general operation.

  • How do i clean up my macbook air to install software updates?

    how do i clean up my macbook air to install software updates? It says that I need to clean up the startup disk because I do not have enough space left but I don't know how to do that. Can anyone help me?

    First, empty the Trash if you haven't already done so. Then reboot. 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 your 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.
    If you're using Time Machine to back up a portable Mac, some of the available space will be used to make local snapshots, which are backup copies of files you've recently deleted. 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.
    To locate large files, you can use Spotlight as described here. That method may not find large folders that contain a lot of small files.
    You can also use a tool such as OmniDiskSweeper (ODS) to explore your volume and find out what's taking up the space. You can 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.
    Proceed further only if the problem hasn't been solved.
    ODS 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.
    Install ODS in the Applications folder as usual. Quit it if it's running.
    Triple-click the line of text below to select it, then copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C):sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper
    Launch the 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 (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 not to screw up. 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. It may take some minutes for ODS to list all the files.
    I don't recommend that you make a habit of doing this. Don't delete anything while running ODS 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 you're done with ODS, quit it and also quit Terminal.

Maybe you are looking for