You can use the Finder or the System About window to quickly and easily figure out which files are taking up the most space on your drive. Either method allows you to find the files and where they are located. You can use this to find files crowding your drive that you may no longer be using.
Comments: 2 Responses to “Find Large Files On Your Mac”
Linda Taylor
7 years ago
My iMac can't be upgraded to Sierra, so the method you used in About This Mac/ Storage isn't possible for me. I've been finding large files in Finder, but this isn't diminishing the size of my "Backup" (193.33GB out of 500GB) and "Other" (87.72GB out of 500GB) categories very much. I don't really know what is meant by Backup and Other. I've only got 106GB available on my iMac and really need to clean it up. Do you have any other ideas that might accelerate cleaning up my El Capitan system?
Linda: Not sure why you need to clear up more space. 106GB is a lot of empty space. Backups are your local Time Machine snapshots and that space will expand and shrink as needed. It is large now because you have plenty of space. See https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204015. Other is everything not in other categories, most likely your data files and some caches and things that will also expand and shrink as needed. It doesn't sound to me like you need to do anything right now.
My iMac can't be upgraded to Sierra, so the method you used in About This Mac/ Storage isn't possible for me. I've been finding large files in Finder, but this isn't diminishing the size of my "Backup" (193.33GB out of 500GB) and "Other" (87.72GB out of 500GB) categories very much. I don't really know what is meant by Backup and Other. I've only got 106GB available on my iMac and really need to clean it up. Do you have any other ideas that might accelerate cleaning up my El Capitan system?
Linda: Not sure why you need to clear up more space. 106GB is a lot of empty space. Backups are your local Time Machine snapshots and that space will expand and shrink as needed. It is large now because you have plenty of space. See https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204015. Other is everything not in other categories, most likely your data files and some caches and things that will also expand and shrink as needed. It doesn't sound to me like you need to do anything right now.