How can I free up space by deleting files in the Documents folder on iMac?

hiroc1 wrote:

Will removing files from the docs folder

affect overall performance?

The Documents folder contains your documents. You could choose to erase all of them, and the only outcome will be the deleted documents and decreased storage usage.

Deletion of documents in the Documents folder might indirectly increase system performance yes, if your storage device is full. But any other steps taken to provide free storage will similarly increase performance for a Mac with marginal or no free space. Once there is sufficient free storage space for normal operations, deleting further documents will have no effect on performance.

You can use Finder and Quick Look to see what is in a particular document file, or can use Finder sorting to see which are the biggest documents in the Documenta folder.

Do have complete and current backups before going on a cleaning spree.

You have a couple of options with documents:

1) move some or all of the files to an external drive

2) move what you do not want to the trash and empty the trash

If your iMac in general is running low on free space...?

see > Free up storage space on Mac - Apple Support

Another way to free up space on your boot drive is if you have an external drive that's formatted APFS or OS X Extended (journaled) you can move your Photos and Music libraries to it and run the from there. Be sure to test them from the external drive before deleting them from the boot drive.

That depends on how much space the files in the Documents folder are using. Generally it is Music, Photos and Movies that take up the most space.

Performance issues can be caused by a lot of different things.

What I suggest before you delete or do anything else,

Is download and run the free version of EtreCheckPro, from > https://etrecheck.com/en/index.html

Then post back here with your Report, as per > How to use the Add Text Feature When Post… - Apple Community