How to set up smartphones and PCs. Informational portal
  • home
  • Reviews
  • How to clean boot disk on macbook air. How to clear (delete) the cache on Mac (macOS) manually and using special programs

How to clean boot disk on macbook air. How to clear (delete) the cache on Mac (macOS) manually and using special programs

Many Mac OS users are trying to find the reason why their devices are buggy or they face the problem of lack of memory. The reason for all these issues may be a simple "clogging" of residual files from your programs and devices. Therefore, we present you the top best programs for Mac cleaning.

Magician

The honorable first place is occupied by the program for cleaning Mac OS - Magican. Perhaps it is this program that deserves special attention, because it has many very interesting features and will be useful to users who would like to get a universal application that will monitor the status of their PC. In addition to the usual cleaning, Magican can find duplicate files, files with a large size, change applications, protect the system from viruses, remove installed programs, show computer usage statistics. If you wish, Magican will monitor the status of the system, as well as notify him when cleaning is required. The main advantages of this application are functionality and free use.

  • Download link: http://magican.en.softonic.com/mac

Clean My Mac

Probably, this application can be called the king of Mac optimizer programs. This application can say - EVERYTHING, at least everything you need from a PC "cleaner". Clean My Mac can perform an automatic or manual cleaning procedure, it can also uninstall and search for programs, empty the trash, erase extensions, iPhoto library. And also in the kit there is a “ Shredder" - this is a function that will help the deleted file bypass the baskets and be completely destroyed. This program has only one drawback - a high price, because the license for the application costs $39.95.

  • Download link: http://cleanmymac .ru.uptodown .com /mac


MacClean

Before us is the brainchild of manufacturers iMobie, which gave us the above mentioned iPhone Clean Pro. MacClean can clean your Mac of junk - and before scanning, you only need to specify the areas in which the program will work. This is how the program works uninstaller software, cleans the trash, removes large and heavy files, as well as unnecessary duplicates. And to the delight of Mac users, the program is absolutely free.

  • Download link: http://macclean.ru.uptodown.com/mac


CCleaner

This application has a wide selection of cleaning areas, a choice of default programs and automatic free space, the ability to remove applications. But unfortunately, this program does not have as many features as we would like, however, free distribution and low weight make it one of the best of its kind, which is why it got into our top.


Most Mac users (and PCs too) sooner or later encounter the same problem: free space on the hard drive literally melts before our eyes, and after six months you start to get a message like “Memory is almost full”. Today I will tell you how to find out what exactly is eating up space on your Mac and how to fix it.

1. Clear your Downloads folder

Oddly enough, but the folder where all files from your browser are downloaded by default is a real "black hole" that sucks in electronic garbage. Its size increases by a couple of tens of megabytes every day, and in just 3 weeks it turns into a dump of unnecessary documents, application distributions and old pictures.


That is why periodically look into this folder and remove garbage or move important files to other places. To make this process easier, use .

2. Get rid of unnecessary apps


It may be too obvious, but still: go through the application folder and get rid of those that you don't need at all. And do not say that “this is all very important”, because we know that this is not so and if you wish, you can easily find a couple of useless programs that have not been launched for several months. will perform a deep cleaning with the removal of internal data, caches and other things.

3. Remove large unused files with DaisyDisk


At times, there may be files stored on your Mac that you either don't know about or have successfully forgotten about. Thus, you can have tens of gigabytes of useless rubbish lying around. Utilities like DaisyDisk are great for finding these files, as they show you exactly which files are taking up the most space on your hard drive.

4. Set up sync with Dropbox and Google Drive

Over the years, our cloud storage grows to quite a decent size, especially given the various promotions for the distribution of free space (like what Google arranged recently). And at the same time, by default, copies of all "cloud" files are stored on the Mac's local hard drive, occupying a decent part of it.

If you do not often use some files, then feel free to turn off the synchronization of unnecessary folders in Dropbox: go to "Settings", go to the "Account" section and set up "Selective Sync".


You can also go deeper and completely refuse to store local copies of files by installing. This utility will mount cloud storage like a regular flash drive: all data is loaded in real time. The only thing you need is a fast internet connection.

5. Upload your iTunes library to the cloud

For those who buy movies and music from the iTunes Store, there's also a good way to free up extra gigabytes by not storing local copies on your Mac. All you need to do is delete the file copies manually and use, built-in, online streaming, or subscribe to.


6. Shelve photos and videos

It's unlikely that you look at photos from your last vacation or videos from your brother's birthday every day, but they occupy the memory on your Mac all the time. It is not necessary to store them on a local hard drive, you can move them to an external HDD or SSD drive, or to special cloud media libraries like Google Photos. To choose the best one, take a look at my service data.

7. CleanMyMac 3 does all the work for you

And finally, the easiest option - use it, which was created specifically to clean up your Mac and free up the treasured gigabytes. The app does everything from clearing the cache and junk to finding large files and photos. The program is paid and costs a lot, but you will forever forget about manually cleaning your Mac.


conclusions

As you can see, some of the tips are banal, but we often underestimate them. If you have something to add, do not be indifferent - write in the comments. And, yes, do not forget to empty the trash at the end, this is the easiest and most effective way.

We present to your attention another portion of tips on how, using simple commands in the Terminal, you can make changes to the system, open settings and enable features that are not available in other ways. Some operations will seem funny, some - rather complicated, but they all serve only one purpose - to make working with Mac OS X and some other applications even more comfortable.

We remind you that when working in the Terminal you should be careful with commands that start with sudo . These are system-level commands that, if used incorrectly, can cause serious problems in Mac OS X, up to and including a system crash. Therefore, these commands must be entered as carefully as possible and exactly as indicated in the instructions. As a rule, when working with such commands, you need to enter the administrator password, which is entered blindly.

MAC OS X CLEANING

For someone it will be a secret, for someone - no, but Mac OS X has a self-cleaning feature. Absolutely without user intervention, the system cleans itself, deleting various temporary files and other garbage. There are three levels of cleaning - daily, weekly and monthly. Each type of cleaning is carried out strictly according to the schedule, at the same set time, usually at night. So, for example, daily cleaning is performed every day at 3:15 am, weekly cleaning is performed every Saturday of the week at 3:15 am, and monthly cleaning is performed every first day of the month at 5:30 am. But there is one feature - automatic cleaning is performed only if the Mac was turned on at a specific time. If the computer was turned off, then the cleaning session will be postponed.

  • Unscheduled launch of the self-cleaning system in Mac OS X

It is not necessary to wait for the next scheduled auto-cleaning or leave the computer on all night. With the help of several Terminal commands, you can independently carry out an unscheduled auto-cleaning of the system. To do this, open the Terminal and enter:

sudo periodic daily
sudo periodic weekly
sudo periodic monthly

It is not necessary to enter all three commands and perform all three types of self-cleaning at once, for example, you can limit yourself to one or two cleanings.

After the self-cleaning is done, you will need to restart the computer, and this can be done right in the Terminal, without having to reach for the apple with the mouse.

  • Cleaning extensions (extensions) and system cache in Mac oS X 10.6.x.

May be needed if you experience strange glitches related to system drivers. We enter the indicated commands in turn, not forgetting to press after each RETURN:

sudo rm -rf /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kext.caches/Startup/Extensions.mkext
sudo rm -rf /System/Library/Caches/

Then we fix the permissions (of course, this can be done in Disk Utility, but why do we need to open several applications at once):

sudo diskutil repairpermissions /

After completing all operations, we reboot. This completes the cleaning - you can start clogging the system again :)

No matter how stable OS X is, you still cannot do without occasional cleaning of this system from all kinds of garbage. Experienced users can do this manually. And for those who do not have enough knowledge or time, special utilities will help.

Probably, it will not be a big exaggeration if we call the CleanMyMac utility one of the most famous among all that are designed to clean up OS X. And its third edition has become even more functional, has received an even more advanced cleaning algorithm. At the same time, the advantage of CleanMyMac 3 lies not only in the ability to clean out the garbage from the system that appears as a result of using the computer, but also the files that were originally present there, but you never needed.

CCleaner


CCleaner

main menu


A good competitor to CleanMyMac 3 and CCleaner. It provides quite ample opportunities not only for cleaning, but also for fine-tuning the system, as well as various useful additions, such as maintaining the history of the clipboard. The utility is available in two variations: MainMenu and MainMenu Pro, which differ from each other in functionality (and, of course, cost). Access to all features is carried out through a special additional menu in the menu bar, thanks to which the utility got its name.

main menu

Onyx


The main purpose of the Onyx utility is to fine-tune the system to suit your needs. This is a good way to access hidden OS X settings without resorting to the services of the "Terminal", which novice users, for obvious reasons, do not really like to use. However, the matter is not limited to settings only, and this utility can also help in removing various garbage, whether it be all kinds of logs, application caches, temporary files, etc.

I want to ask you for help. Is there a way that I can clean my mac for free?

Here I am going to show you some of the ways you can do clean mac free. All you have to do is follow these tips to save more money.

Daily use of your Mac as the main tool for your business, office work, or even school work can slow down your Mac.

And because of this, some users tend to buy things that will make their Mac run faster, such as adding other RAM to your Mac or buying a new one.

But doing this is not really practical because you are going to spend a fortune. If the main issue is that you just want to clean up your Mac so it runs faster and you have more hard drive space.

Then there are other ways you can maybe clean mac free and you don't have to go anywhere because it's all on your Mac computer.

Article Guide

Part 1: Clean up your Mac for free using its features

If you feel like your Mac is running really slow these days, then cleaning up your Mac for free is the best option you can have.

Always make sure your Mac is always up to date as this will help you speed up your Mac. It's actually free. All you have to do is click on the Apple icon and then click on the App Store.

After that, go to the "Update" tab. Once you're there, go ahead and install any update you see, including an update for your Mac OS if there is one.

Deleting your old apps will certainly clean up your Mac because it will free up some of your disk space.

The old apps installed on your Mac are actually eating up your storage, so why not get rid of them.

TIPP 3: Clean up your storage space

In addition to uninstalling some old apps that you don't use anymore that are actually taking a big toll on your storage space, you might also want to consider cleaning up those small files that you don't need, especially if you're one of those Mac users. , which have the minimum amount of memory.

You can simply find those old big files on your Mac and delete them permanently so you can clean up your Mac computer.

Here you have to make sure that you have deleted random cache files, history and other junk files that you have on your Mac because they can affect the storage space and performance of your Mac computer.

Make sure your Trash is empty because the files that are in your Trash are still taking up some space on your Mac.

Most browsers have the ability to save all downloaded files and put them in the Downloads folder, which also takes up some disk space, so you may want to clear that as well. For you it's easy follow the instructions below.

Launch Finder on your Mac

And then go to your username or Download.

Look at all the files in that folder and delete any files you no longer need. However, if you need some of the files listed there, you might consider moving them to a different folder.

Having too many files on your desktop will also use up disk space and besides, it looks unpleasant on the eyes.

Gather all the files you need and organize them in one folder, then delete all the files you no longer need to clean up your Mac.

If you've been using Apple Mail on your Mac for a long time, there's a good chance that you also have a lot of email attachments and a few random files that are actually filling up your disk storage. Because of this, you also might want to remove anything you don't need so you can clean up your Mac. To enable you to do so, just follow these simple steps. Launch Spotlight by pressing the Command key and spacebar in Mail Downloads, and then press Enter on the folder that appears on the screen. I bet you'll find a lot of email attachments there, so try to clean those too.

If you are experiencing a slow process when starting your Mac, then there may be several applications that are also trying to start.

If so, then you really need to clean up your Mac and remove all those apps. To do this, just follow these steps.

Go to and launch System Preferences and then select Users & Groups.

After that, go to the "Login Items" tab

Check all items and remove any unnecessary files or logins.

If you're actually using an older Mac with a hard drive, you should be able to see the difference between installing an SSD.

Having this on your Mac will improve the performance of your Mac and will also clean up our Mac computer.

Part 2: How to Clean Up a Mac for Free in the Easiest and Fastest Way

As stated above, all the tips mentioned above are actually free and you can actually clean up your Mac computer.

However, while it is actually free, it will take more of your time just by following these tips one by one to clean up your Mac.

Don't worry because we are the perfect way for you to clean your Mac for free, easy and fast.

You can do everything mentioned above just by using one free tool - iMyMac - Cleaner.

This software will help you speed up your Mac as well as clean it up by deleting all junk and unnecessary files on your Mac computer.

iMyMac - Cleaner can help you find and then remove all junk email attachments, iTunes backup, duplicate files, big old files and other junk files you don't need on your Mac.

It can help you clean up your Mac in no time and give you more storage space.

Key Feature:

Powerful is because it can scan everything on your Mac computer. You can also check your system like your cpu, memory, disk as well as battery status.

Selectively. Once the Mac scan is complete, you will have the option to preview each item of the scanned information and then delete them once you confirm that those items are no longer needed.

One click - you can scan your Mac in the fastest way.

Free Trial - You will have the privilege of having a Mac cleaner with 500MB. You can try this software for free so you can clean up your Mac and see what it can do. And also, all files should be deleted on your Mac.

What iMyMac Cleaner Can Do

It can help you remove all system junk so you have more space.

It can find and then delete all unnecessary files.

It has the ability to automatically identify and then selectively delete all files that you don't need on your Mac computer.

It can also easily free up gigabytes on your hard drive.

How to Use iMyMac to Clean Your Mac for Free

Step 1: Download and install it on Mac

Go ahead and download iMyMac - Cleaner from our official website and install it on your Mac computer.

Step 2: Choose the task you want to complete

After successfully installing the software on your Mac computer, launch it. On the home screen, you will be able to see where your Mac system status is.

On the left panel of your screen, you will be able to see the various tasks that this software can perform. You can choose "System Junk" if you want to clean up all junk files on your Mac computer.

After that, click the "Scan" button so that iMyMac - Cleaner can start scanning all the junk files on your Mac computer.

Wait until the software finishes scanning your Mac computer.

Step 3: Select System Junk and Remove It

When the scanning process is completed, iMyMac - Cleaner will show you all your junk files by category such as app cache, system cache, photo junk files, mail junk files and more.

Select the folder one by one and then check the items it contains. Once you have selected the items you want to remove, click " clean Button ".

TIP: You can also try other tasks by selecting one on the left side of the screen. After selecting other tasks on this page, you can simply follow the first three steps to clean up your Mac.

Step 4: cleaning completed

After the program finishes deleting all your junk files, an indication will appear in each folder that says "Zero KB", which means that all junk files have been removed from your Mac.

However, there are some folders that do not have this indication because they are an automatically recreated folder.

Part 3: Conclusion

Cleaning our Mac computer is one of the ways to free up space and, of course, to make it run faster. For this reason, we'd like to get our Mac for free so we don't have to spend a dime.

Luckily, we have iMyMac - Cleaner. This program will surely help you in cleaning up your Mac because it can certainly clean up your junk files, your duplicate files, your old large files, junk email attachments, unused iTunes backups and more.

Basically, iMyMac - Cleaner can actually do everything you do on a Macc manually by simply cleaning it up and freeing up some of your storage space.

All the things we mentioned above can be done for free when cleaning up your Mac computer. You might want to do all of these things rather than buying extra RAM for your Mac or other hard drive just to make it run faster than usual, and we have to admit that buying these things is really expensive.

You can try and try iMyMac - Cleaner for free to be sure that you will have a program that really suits your needs.

This way, you will be sure that iMyMac - Cleaner will definitely do everything that it promises you that it can do.

And, of course, this is a guarantee that after this free cleaning, you know and are sure that if you are going to purchase this software, you will definitely get what you expect.

Download iMyMacc from our official website and experience the best way to clean your Mac computer.

When you download several movies or series, and then delete them after watching, the question may arise, but where did the free space on the Mac disk go?

That is, even after deleting files, disk space may not be freed. The same can happen not when deleting files, but when moving them to an external drive.

A very urgent problem for people working with graphics. When working with video, for example, both 10 and 25 GB can be stored in the cache - this is not the limit, it all depends on the amount of source material. When working with 3D software, the numbers are slightly smaller.

And now you can think if every program on the computer makes records for itself, how much they can take from the hard drive. And if we add to this the files in the trash, outdated Time Machine backups, files that iTunes copies to my documents, Browser caches (Safari, Chrome, Yandex, etc.) - the figure is not small.

Do you still have questions Where does the disk space go? I think now you have another question, how to clean it all up!

Clear the disk from temporary files and program cache

Emptying the basket

In some cases, a message may appear stating that files cannot be deleted, this is due to the fact that files, even when moved to the trash, continue to be used by programs such as Bittorent, Skype, etc.

It is solved by turning off running third-party programs or rebooting if these programs are not installed in your autorun!

Quit all running applications with a keyboard shortcut cmd+Q.

By the way, there is also a convenient keyboard shortcut for emptying the trash.

When you're in the Finder app, just click Shift + Option + Command + Delete and the basket will be emptied immediately without confirmation.

To empty the basket with a confirmation pop-up window, you must click: Shift+Command+Delete

Although I think that you have already done this, so let's move on to more interesting actions.

Clearing Browser Cache

If you spend a lot of time on the Internet and have never cleared the cache and cookies of browsers, then they can take up quite a bit of space on your hard drive. Cleaning in different types of browsers is the same, but has slight differences!

safari. In the left corner (next to the apple), click on safari and select clear history, the important point is to select "All history" in the next window.

Chrome and Yandex. Similar situation. In the right corner, click on the button with dots - history - history - clear history. We select everything except the saved passwords, for all the time and clean it.

Same for other browsers...

To clear the cache from other programs, such an easy way is not always available.

  1. We use the utility to clear the cache and temporary files. For example CCleaner, it will clear all temporary information for you.
  2. Open the window Finder and with a combination Shift+cmd+G go to ~/Library/Caches directory, select all files and folders with cmd+A and move everything to shopping cart. If prompted, enter your password.
  3. Once again with a keyboard shortcut Shift+cmd+G, go now to the /Library/Caches folder. Do the same - delete all files and folders.

After emptying the trash and reboot!

Keep freeing up space on your Mac

On Mac laptops starting with OS X Lion (10.7), if you have Time Machine enabled, then along with it, the function of creating file system snapshots, which are also called local backups, should have been enabled. The purpose of this feature is to augment Time Machine backups when the external drive or Time Capsule that you configured to store the backups on is not connected.

In general, a rather useful function, it should be noted, because if you delete something really important, but this is not on the Time Machine disk, then you can get very upset.

On the other hand, when you are not aware of such care for your files, and after deleting files, the disk space remains busy, then you can also start to get nervous and sleep badly.

According to the Apple support site, when there is free space on the disk:

  • less than 20%, then Time Machine starts deleting snapshots, starting with the oldest ones;
  • less than 10% or less than 5 GB, then Time Machine deletes all local backups except for the most recent (new) and stops creating snapshots.

The easiest way to find out if your free space is taken up by these local backups is with the About This Mac utility.

  1. Choose About This Mac from the Apple menu  (upper left corner).
  2. In the window that appears, click on the "More Info" button.
  3. Open the Storage tab.

Archives (Backups) are the same local backups.

Deleting local backups

If you need free space here and now, then this is easy to do by running and executing the following command there:

sudo tmutil disablelocal

Then you will need to enter the administrator password. This command will disable the creation of local snapshots and delete those already created.

I myself like to make backups, and this helped me out several times, so I would advise you to then turn the local copy function back on:

sudo tmutil enablelocal

To create an instant backup of the current system state, run the following command:

Utilities for finding large files

If you didn’t turn on Time Machine, and even after disabling the creation of instant snapshots, you still don’t have enough free space, and you don’t know who took it all, then utilities for finding large files and directories that take up the most can come in handy places..

We present to your attention another portion of tips on how, using simple commands in the Terminal, you can make changes to the system, open settings and enable features that are not available in other ways. Some of the operations will seem funny, some - quite complicated, but they all serve only one thing - in order to make working with Mac OS X and some other applications even more comfortable.

We remind you that when working in the Terminal you should be careful with commands that start with sudo . These are system-level commands that, if used incorrectly, can cause serious problems in Mac OS X, up to and including a system crash. Therefore, these commands must be entered as carefully as possible and exactly as indicated in the instructions. As a rule, when working with such commands, you need to enter the administrator password, which is entered blindly.

MAC OS X CLEANING

For some it will be a secret, for some it will not, but Mac OS X has a self-cleaning feature. Absolutely without user intervention, the system cleans itself, deleting various temporary files and other garbage. There are three levels of cleaning - daily, weekly and monthly. Each type of cleaning is carried out strictly according to the schedule, at the same set time, usually at night. So, for example, daily cleaning occurs every day at 3:15 am, weekly cleaning occurs every Saturday of the week at 3:15 am, and monthly cleaning occurs every first day of the month at 5:30 am. But there is one feature - automatic cleaning is performed only if the Mac was turned on at a specific time. If the computer was turned off, then the cleaning session will be postponed.

  • Unscheduled launch of the self-cleaning system in Mac OS X

It is not necessary to wait for the next scheduled auto-cleaning or leave the computer on all night. With the help of several Terminal commands, you can independently carry out an unscheduled auto-cleaning of the system. To do this, open the Terminal and enter:

sudo periodic daily
sudo periodic weekly
sudo periodic monthly

It is not necessary to enter all three commands and perform all three types of self-cleaning at once, for example, you can limit yourself to one or two cleanings.

After the self-cleaning is done, you will need to restart the computer, and this can be done right in the Terminal, without having to reach for the apple with the mouse.

sudo reboot

  • Cleaning extensions (extensions) and system cache in Mac oS X 10.6.x.

May be needed if you experience strange glitches related to system drivers. We enter the indicated commands in turn, not forgetting to press after each RETURN:

sudo rm -rf /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kext.caches/Startup/Extensions.mkext
sudo rm -rf /System/Library/Caches/

Then we fix the permissions (of course, this can be done in Disk Utility, but why do we need to open several applications at once):

sudo diskutil repairpermissions /

To keep your Mac in tip-top shape, we recommend using CleanMyMac to scan and clean your system of junk and unnecessary files.

How to Clean Your Mac Quickly and Efficiently

You can download the free version of CleanMyMac 3. CleanMyMac 3 requires at least OS X 10.8 and 500MB of free space on your Mac.

Try the free version to clean up your Mac, and if you like this program, you can purchase it from the following link.

A CleanMyMac license for one Mac costs about $40. Next, we will tell you how to use this program, using the example of the full version of CleanMyMac.

How to clean up your Mac

To get started, run a full system scan of your computer using the Smart Cleanup option at the top of the menu.

It may take some time, when CleanMyMac finishes checking, you will see item by item that will be removed, such as the option to clear browser history and more. Check all options and click on Clean, this will remove unnecessary files.

Then, click Large & Old Files. CleanMyMac will gather information about the largest files on your Mac. Large files can take up a lot of space and eventually slow down your computer. Click the "Review Files" button to see what files were found and select the ones you want to keep and the ones you want to delete.

Since in our example all found files were on an external hard drive, we completely deleted all found files, thus clearing 9 gigabytes.

Smart Scan runs all cleaning options, but you can also run each section as you see fit.

Below the Cleaning section is the Utilites section. Here you will find options Maintenance, Extensions, Shredder, Privacy andUninstaller.

  • maintenance– use scripts to optimize and maintain the performance of your system.
  • Extensions- View all unnecessary extensions and disable unnecessary ones.
  • Shredder– Completely erase files. Eliminates the chance that someone will be able to recover previously deleted files.
  • privacy– Disables all online and offline activities of the browsers installed on your device.
  • Uninstaller– Deleting applications and related files.

The Utilites option allows you to control all system files without the need to create scripts or download individual programs. For example, you can disable many dictionaries for other languages ​​using the Extensions option, this will remove unnecessary dictionaries.

CleanMyMac is a great way to periodically clean up and keep your Mac in top condition without going to service centers or the Apple Store.

Top Related Articles