how to access and manage 'other' storage on iMac

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Level 1

12 points

how to access and manage 'other' storage on iMac

Firstly, let me say that I have looked through various posts about ‘other’ storage on this forum but unfortunately none of them have proven to helpful. I am using a 2015 27” 5k iMac with a 1tb HDD drive and 16gb RAM. It is currently running IOS Big Sur v11.6. Storage currently reads as follows;

Apps - 30.6gb

IOS - 15.4gb

Mail - 0.5gb

Music - 79gb

Music Creator - 2.2gb

System - 15.3gb

…other - 775.6gb

leaving c. 81gb free

603gb of the ‘other’ storage is accounted for by my documents, primarily images (I intend to transfer around 170gb of this to external storage and remove from the iMac). This leaves around 170gb of unknown ‘other’ data, the bulk of which I assume to be accumulated junk that I need to clear.

I have tried downloading Clean my Mac and Mac Keeper but both insist on you buying the software before they will do anything meaningful. I am not prepared to pay for software unless I am confident it will do the job required of it and this kind of software I think should be part of the machine’s standard supplied software package. It is ridiculous that Apple make it so difficult to access and manage this type of data.

I need to clear as much of this unaccounted for ‘other’ storage as I can and I did read in another post that with Big Sur any vital files you shouldn’t mess with will be stored under ‘System’, suggesting that any unidentified ‘other’ storage is likely to be junk.

I would be grateful for any thoughts or advice on how resolve the above. Many thanks in advance

Posted on Nov 30, 2021 11:28 AM

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Answer 1

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D.I. Johnson

Level 7

22,385 points

Nov 30, 2021 11:32 AM in response to Dw998

“Other” storage on Mac is files that don’t easily fall into the defined categories of “Audio" “Movies” “Photos” “Apps” and “Backups”. The types of files found in “Other" would include:

• macOS system files

• Temporary files

• App plugins and extensions

• Browser and Mail caches

• Documents like .pdf, .psd, .doc,

• Disk images and archives like .dmg, .tar, .zip

You cannot directly manage the contents of this category. That is done by macOS, and the category varies in size depending on the current state of your Mac.

What you can do...

• Empty the Trash in the Dock.

• Empty the trash in the Photos app.

• Delete unused and unneeded installers from your downloads folder and desktop.

• Transfer files that you don’t use daily to an external drive. Files that take up the most room are movies, images and music.

• Force Time Machine to delete local snapshots:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204015

This from Apple on the subject of storage management:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206996

And this for a better, more thorough explanation:

What is “Other” and what can I do about it? - Apple Community (Kappy)

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