There were some helpful replies in an old post, but didn't specify how to do it exactly. I have a macbook air and an iMac desktop that I want to "clean up" without using spyware random web apps and without doing a complete factory reset.
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
Cleaning out your old data is going to be a bit of a chore. Only you can determine what is unused and can be deleted and what you feel is important to keep. Most anything in your home folder can be deleted with little risk to the operation of the computer.
However, I would advise that you make sure you have a Time Machine or other backup of your computer before proceeding. Then should you discover that you have deleted something you shouldn't have, you can recover it.
What you can do…
• Empty the Trash in the Dock.
• Empty the trash in the Photos app.
• Delete unused and unneeded application installers from your downloads folder and desktop.
• Reboot your Mac at least weekly.
• Transfer files that you don’t use daily to an external drive and then delete them from the startup drive and empty the trash. Files that take up the most room are movies, images and music.
• Force Time Machine to delete local snapshots:
About Time Machine local snapshots - Apple Support
• Use Disk Utility to delete APFS snapshots:
View APFS snapshots in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support
This from Apple on the subject of storage management
Free up storage space on Mac - Apple Support
Clean up what, exactly? Documents? Browser data? Some other data ? And in what version(s) of macOS?
pretty much what I said, unused saved data and things that are cached. If I can see the file, then I would know how to delete it. Mac OS 15.1.1 Sequoia. Thank you!
Thank you for that.
You're welcome.
How can I clear unused saved data and cache on Mac without factory reset?
