OS X Lion: Increase disk space
There are several ways to increase available disk space.
Delete items you don’t need
- Move items you don’t need to the Trash. Then press and hold the Trash icon in the Dock and choose Empty Trash.
- In Mail, choose Mailbox > Erase Deleted Items > In All Accounts, and Mailbox > Erase Junk Mail.
- In iPhoto, choose iPhoto > Empty iPhoto Trash.
- In iMovie, choose File > “Move to Trash” or File > “Move Rejected Clips to Trash” to delete unwanted items. Or, choose File > Space Saver to delete all excess video from an Event.
Check the other applications you use for ways to remove or compress items.
Remove downloaded items you no longer need
When you download items from the Internet, they are stored in the Downloads stack in the Dock. Over time, unneeded items may accumulate.
- Press and hold the Downloads icon in the Dock and choose Open Downloads.
- Drag any unneeded items from Downloads to the Trash, and then choose Finder > Empty Trash.
If you don’t see the Downloads icon in the Dock, open a Finder window, select your home folder in the sidebar, and then double-click the Downloads folder.
Locate large files
You can find your largest files, and then compress them or move them to another disk.
- Click the Finder icon in the Dock.
- Choose Go > Home.
- Choose File > Find.
- Open the Kind pop-up menu and choose Other.
- Under “Select a search attribute” select File Size, and then click OK.
- Change the “equals” pop-up menu to “is greater than,” and change the “KB” pop-up menu to “MB.”
- Enter a minimum file size. 100 MB is a good starting point. You can change the value to see more or fewer results.
Searching begins as soon as you type a file size. It may take a moment for all the search results to appear.
Compress files and folders
You can compress files and folders into an archive to remove excess space. If you need to use the items later, you can expand the archive.