Can I move applications to an external SSD? I tried dragging my Cricuit Design Space to my external drive but it won't open. It says "Invalid Path - Please move Cricut Design Space to your Application Folder". If I'm going to transfer most of my applications to my external drive this might happen too. Is there really a way to do this in order to free up space in my Mac?
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
Mac mini (M2 Pro, 2023)
It shouldn't matter where an application physically lives. Any application that won't run because it isn't in /Applications is simply wrong. Regardless, there isn't anything you can do about that. But most applications should run fine from an external drive.
But why do you want to do this? It will only slow down application launch for those applications that still launch. If you are trying to save disk space, it totally won't help with that.
While generally most apps can reside anywhere, some cross platform apps, i.e. apps that run on Windows, macOS, and Linux will often have hard coded paths in their apps and then all other resources are set relative to that.
The vast majority of Mac only apps don't really care where they are located.
As far as creating space, follow the others advice that have been given. Just to add, besides the obvious disc hogs such as videos and music libraries, there is probably a lot of stuff on your drive that you rarely access or are only keeping as a "record" that can be located on an external drive and really don't have the need be on the internal for "fast access".
For starters have a look at > Free up storage space - Apple Support
What you may want to consider is moving the largest of your Photos, Music or Movies Library off to an external drive.
Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support
Change where your music files are stored on Mac - Apple Support
Move your iMovie for Mac library - Apple Support
The caution and warning here is, that you should never trust your media libraries to just one external drive. For safety, those media libraries should also be included in with your Time Machine backups and/or to a second external backup drive.
I don't use iCloud because I found it was making copies on my computer!
You can check what is taking up most space by reading "Free up storage space" posted by den.thed.
This screenshot shows that "Documents" take up most space on my computer. If you click the arrowed "i" you will be presented with a list of every file starting with the largest.
My Mac's space is getting full. When I was doing a project in Adobe Photoshop and Illustration, my Photoshop stopped saying need more disk space. Though I save all my projects in my external and I have my iCloud for all my photos and other stuff.
I was thinking transferring some Applications to an external can manage my space
Yes. That's what I thought. You will need to find some other way to recovery more free disk space. Trying to move applications is a waste of time. They take up only a tiny fraction of your disk space. You will make like more difficult for yourself and accomplish nothing.
woodmeister50 wrote:
While generally most apps can reside anywhere, some cross platform apps, i.e. apps that run on Windows, macOS, and Linux will often have hard coded paths in their apps and then all other resources are set relative to that.
That is my recollection as well. I recall MS Office needed to be on the boot volume, at least for other versions;
Can I move applications to External SSD?
