One of the most common questions among Mac users today is how to reclaim enough memory to provide great working performance. People are concerned about keeping their Mac in a good condition, so they look for any useful methods for speeding it up. The first solution that comes to mind is to do an effective Mac cleaning to remove unnecessary files and prevent system glitches.
Question: Q: System Storage Taking Up Way Too Much Space in macOS Sierra. I've encountered a problem on my brand new MacBook, but haven't been able to find a solution after working on it for most of today. In a nutshell: When I go to 'About This Mac Storage' the System files were taking up a whopping 90+ GB of my hard drive. Here is a screen.
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Clean up Other space of system and temporary files Every second your Mac is on, the macOS creates and piles up system files — logs, for example. At some point, the system needs these files, but they quickly become outdated and just sit there wasting your disk space. And guess what, they are in the Other Mac storage category, too.
But sometimes users don’t know how to clean Mac to free memory or have no time to clean their PCs manually. We understand that this is a boring or difficult process, but it is highly recommended to start with reclaiming RAM memory. This will definitely be useful for boosting the performance of your computer.
Try These Three Ways to Free Inactive Memory on Mac OS X
First, let’s clarify what inactive memory is on Mac. Inactive memory is used by recently active and terminated applications. The system of your computer saves this memory in case you want to use these applications again. If you no longer want to open those programs, the inactive memory will eventually be released or transferred.
But what to do when there is not enough memory and you see your Mac’s performance degradation? In this situation, we advise you to clear the inactive RAM by following the instructions below.
Before we begin, let us introduce one very useful and interesting application for Mac, namely MacFly Pro. This innovative cleaning software has been developed to take care of your Mac and keep it in a nice shape. MacFly Pro does the following: it removes inactive or old apps, as well as related files, cleans inactive memory, clears the cache and duplicates, gets rid of language and log files, and scans the overall condition to warn system of violations or threats. So if you want a fast and proper cleaning for your Mac, make sure you download and run MacFly Pro on your PC.
And now, we go directly to the ways how to free up ram on Mac:
1. Use Terminal
Open the Terminal application on your Mac.
Then, enter the command below:
sudo purge
After that, enter the password to clear inactive memory.
The advantage of this simple method is that it’s a default application and you don’t need to download any other programs. On the other hand, it might cause some slowdowns and so that you will have to enter the lines one more time.
2. Use Script Editor
The second way how to free up ram mac is to use Script Editor (the most popular technique used by Apple developers). Now, follow these steps:
Launch Script Editor
This is how it looks in an opened window:
Next, write down the following text:
display dialog “Free inactive RAM?” buttons {“Cancel”, “OK”} with icon 2 with title “Freeing RAM” default button 2
Watch damage mode. A file with the DMG file extension is an Apple Disk Image file, or sometimes called a Mac OS X Disk Image file, which is basically a digital reconstruction of a physical disc. For this reason, a DMG is often the file format used to store compressed software installers instead of having to use a physical disc. To read the Universal Family Clock (Watch), first look at the position of the hour hand, and then the minute hand. One hour has 60 minutes; in every 5 minutes, there is a different meaning of time.
set buttonAnswer to the button returned of the result
if buttonAnswer is “ОК” then
say “Freeing RAM. Wait please.”
tell application “Terminal”
do shell script “purge”
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quit
end tell
say “Done!”
end if
After that, you should press ⌘+S and save the script in Application folders. Also, select Application format instead of Script.
This specific app is certainly useful, but actually, it is hard to open an app if you urgently need to clean your RAM on a Mac.
3. Use Third-Party Software
The last thing you do to free RAM is to look for and find some efficient cleaning applications. For instance, MacFly Pro is a great digital software and document scanner that will take care of your PC. With this app, you will forget about the necessity to clean Mac manually since it will do it for you in a matter of minutes. What is more, it will constantly support the system and optimize the performance of your Mac OS X.
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So, your Mac is running out of storage. You try to figure out what’s taking up your disk space by clicking the Apple logo on the top-left of the screen, selecting About This Mac, and hitting the Storage tab.
To your surprise, you see a yellow bar representing “System” that seems to occupy way more space than you think it should. In the example above, it only shows 33.87 GB, but take a look at this Apple discussion — some Mac users report that System Storage takes an astonishing 250 GB.
Worse yet, you have no idea what’s included in “System” storage, because clicking the “Manage” button brings you to this System Information window… and the “System” row is greyed out.
Why does my Mac system require so much space?
What does it contain?
Is it safe to remove some of those system files?
How do I regain more storage space?
Questions like these may easily get to your head. Although my Mac now has a good amount of disk space available, I’m always wary of files that are taking up more space than they should.
I have no idea why “System” is greyed out while “Documents,” “System Junk,” “Trash,” etc. allow you to review the files based on size and type. My hunch is that Apple does this on purpose to prevent users from deleting system files that could lead to serious issues.
What Files Are Included in System Storage on Mac?
During my research, I found many people report that Apple counts iTunes backup files and app caches (e.g. Adobe video cache files) in the System category.
Since it’s greyed out and we are unable to click on that category for deeper analysis, we’ll have to use a third-party app to assist.
CleanMyMac X is perfect for this kind of analysis. Since I tested the app in our Mac cleaner review, it immediately came to my head when I saw “System” was greyed out in Storage. Note that CleanMyMac isn’t freeware, but the new “Space Lens” feature is free to use and it allows you to scan your Macintosh HD, and then show you an in-depth overview of what’s taking up disk space on your Mac.
Step 1:Download CleanMyMac and install the app on your Mac. Open it, under “Space Lens” module, first click the yellow “Grant Access” button to allow the app to access your Mac files and then select “Scan” to get started.
Step 2: Soon it’ll show you a folder/file tree and you can hover your cursor over each block (i.e. a folder). There you can find more details. In this case, I clicked “System” folder to continue.
Step 3: The file breakdown below indicates that some Library and iOS Support files are the culprits.
The interesting part is that the System file size shown in CleanMyMac is much smaller than the size shown in System Information. This puzzles me and makes me believe that Apple definitely has counted some other files (not real system files) in the System category.
What are they? Archivos con extension dmg online. I have no clue, honestly. But as reported by other Mac users who experienced the same issue, they said Apple also considers app caches and iTunes backup files as System files.
Out of curiosity, I ran CleanMyMac again for a quick scan. That app found 13.92 GB in iTunes Junk. Further review revealed that the junk files are old iOS device backups, software updates, broken downloads, etc.
Pc Storage Cleaner
But even after adding this amount to the original system files returned by DaisyDisk, the total size is still a bit less than what’s returned in System Information.
If cleaning the System Storage is still not enough to bring your Mac available disk space to a normal level (i.e. 20% or more), see below.
What Else Can I Do to Reclaim More Disk Space?
There are tons of ways out there. Here are a few of my favorites that should help you get back a decent amount of space quickly.
1. Sort all files by size and delete old large files.
Open Finder, go to Recents, and look at the Size column. Click on it to sort all recent files by file size (from large to small). You’ll have a clear overview of what items are eating up a large amount of space, e.g. From 1 GB to 10 GB, and from 100 MB to 1 GB.
Clean System Storage Mac
In my MacBook Pro, I found a few large videos that could be transferred to an external drive.
Note: If the Size column doesn’t show up, click on the Settings icon and select Arrange By > Size.
2. Run CleanMyMac.
If you are not a power Mac user, another way to help you quickly locate unnecessary files is using CleanMyMac, an app that won our award for the best Mac cleaner software. As you can also see in my detailed review here, I believe CleanMyMac is a must-have app for all basic users.
3. Remove duplicate files with Gemini 2.
Don’t forget those duplicates and similar files! They can stack up without you being aware of it. Finding them is sometimes time-consuming. That’s what Gemini 2 is designed for. Simply select a few frequently used folders (e.g. Documents, Downloads, etc.) in the main zone of Gemini.
It then scans them and returns all the duplicate files that might be worth removing. Of course, it’s always a good practice to review them before doing so. You can also read our Gemini review here.
Wrapping It Up
Ever since Apple introduced the Optimized Storage feature on macOS Sierra and High Sierra, users got the option of saving space by storing content in the cloud. Apple also has several new tools that make it easy to find and remove unneeded files.
That bar under the Storage tab is beautiful. It does allow you to get a quick overview of what’s taking up the most space on our hard drive. However, it still lacks insights on the “System” category as it’s greyed out.
Hopefully, the guides above have helped you figure out the reasons you’ve got so much “System” data, and most importantly you’ve reclaimed some disk space — especially for new MacBooks pre-installed with flash storage (usually 128 GB or 256 GB) — the storage is so precious!