Mail App: How & What to Delete to Save Space

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Mail App: How & What to Delete to Save Space

Hi guys, I only just discovered the Mail app for Mac (only 6 years late!) and I just wanted to ask a newbie question:

With the new Mail v8.0 app (for Yosemite), is there a way to manage downloaded emails? I don't want the Mail app to take up too much of my hard drive space.

Does archiving emails help? What can I do to make sure the Mail app doesn't use too much of my hard drive space?

Thanks in advance!

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014), OS X Yosemite (10.10), 2.5GHz Intel Core i7, 16GB RAM

Posted on Oct 22, 2014 6:06 PM

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Answer 1

Oct 22, 2014 6:20 PM in response to Kaze Kyou

Archiving does not reduce the size of your data. Archiving simply moves the messages out of the folder to the archive folder.

What type of account(s)? (POP, IMAP, Exchange)

Gmail, Outlook.com, Yahoo, iCloud etc.

Are your messages downloaded into Mail? If yes, get size.

Go to the User's Library folder. This folder is hidden by default. To unhide: Select the Finder in the Dock. Under Go in the Menu bar > hold down the Option key and you’ll see the Library.

Scroll to the Mail folder.

Do a Get Info on Mail.

Next open Disk Utility in Applications/Utilities.

Select the Macintosh HD in the list. How much free space on your drive.

(You can also find this info under About this Mac > Storage)

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Answer 2

Kaze Kyou Author

Level 1

1 points

Oct 22, 2014 6:26 PM in response to dianeoforegon

dianeoforegon wrote:

What type of account(s)? (POP, IMAP, Exchange)

Gmail, Outlook.com, Yahoo, iCloud etc.

Are your messages downloaded into Mail? If yes, get size.

Hi Diane! Thanks for the quick response.

I currently have one iCloud account (no mail whatsoever), two Gmails (one personal and one for work) and a Hotmail account (personal). My Mail folder is currently at 4.07GB.

I do not know if I have the settings on "download mail". I tried Googling, but all of them seem to be for the Mail app pre-Yosemite. Also, might attachments be the reason why my mail is over 4GB? Is there a way to manage already downloaded attachments?

Thanks for your patience!

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Answer 3

Oct 23, 2014 9:03 AM in response to Kaze Kyou

Looking for answer as well.

Thanks

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Answer 4

Oct 23, 2014 11:17 AM in response to Kaze Kyou

I don't consider 4GB to be large. Options to reduce mail on your drive: 1) delete mail from Gmail, 2) use a web browser so you don't download the messages

If you need to clear space on your drive, it's best to look for large files. Usually it's your iTunes and iPhoto libraries. You can move these to an external drive and point iTunes and iPhoto to open the library on the external drive.

Download OmniDiskSweeper (free)

http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnidisksweeper/

Select your main drive usually named Macintosh HD. the largest files will float to the top. Usually it's the User folder. When you select the User's folder it will show you the large files in each folder at the top. Once you identify your large files you can delete or move off the drive.

This show my drive. As you can see I store almost all my data in DropBox.

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Answer 5

Oct 23, 2014 11:22 AM in response to for life love

Run OmniDiskSweeper to find your large files. If you still need help deciding what to remove or delete from your drive, it helps to know the size of your drive and current free space.

First step is to empty the trash.

If you don't have an external drive, I highly suggest you buy a drive.

Recommended Drives

USB 3.0 drives work on USB 2.0 but you do get 2.0 speed. They are cheaper because they are popular PC drives. If you get a new computer you'll get the bump to 3.0 speed. I don’t recommend FW. The newer computers don’t have FW ports. You would need a connector in order to use the drive on a newer computer.

USB 3.0 is 10x faster than USB 2.0

Thunderbolt is 12 times faster than FireWire 800 and up to 20 times faster than USB 2.0.

Size: I recommend either the 2T or 3T drives. Often they are cheaper than a 1T drive. The 4T drives have more issues and failure rates. You can partition a large drive.

The Seagate USB 3.0 Backup plus drives come formatted for PC but easy to format in Disk Utility.

This Western Digital drive has good reviews: Has a 2 yr warranty. Comes formatted for Mac but I would still format using Disk Utility.

WD My Book Hard Drive for Mac 2 TB (WDBYCC0020HBK-NESN)

WD My Book Hard Drive for Mac 3 TB (WDBYCC0030HBK-NESN)

Check the warranty when comparing. The longer the warranty the better the drive. WD makes cheaper drives but with almost no warranty.

Locally, Best Buy seems to have the best prices.

You can get one drive for both Time Machine and clone, but it’s recommended that you use different drives for each. If the drive dies you lose both types of backup. Time Machine needs 2X or 3X the amount of space on your drive.

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Answer 6

Kaze Kyou Author

Level 1

1 points

Oct 23, 2014 4:50 PM in response to dianeoforegon

Thanks for the response. I know that 4GB isn't that big in the grand scheme of things, but 3-4 years down the road I'm hoping it doesn't becomes problem. Pity the only way to solve it is to manually delete these emails.

My last Mac nearly ran out of free storage due to a massive amount of mystery "other" files (200GB+). I've already moved my iTunes and iPhoto library to a USB3 Hard Drive; my main concern was running into this same "other files" problem again.

Thanks for the help!

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Answer 7

Oct 23, 2014 6:08 PM in response to Kaze Kyou

The mystery files could have been the local Time Machine backup files. When your laptop is not connected to Time Machine, if there is space Time Machine will make local backups. They are deleted automatically as space is needed or when you attach your Time Machine, they will be copied to the Time Machine drive.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4878

OmniDiskSweeper is a great tool for finding the mystery files. I had a user once that had set to backup files daily and never delete in one of his apps. Several years later there were 100GB of backup files that we found in the Shared folder.

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Answer 8

Kaze Kyou Author

Level 1

1 points

Oct 23, 2014 8:48 PM in response to dianeoforegon

I did use OmniDiskSweeper on my old Mac (as well as Onyx and Terminal commands), but even after the Time Machine files were deleted, I still had a massive amount of "Other Files". Probably all the garbage I had collected during the 6 years of using that Mac! That and I had no idea what I could actually delete without destroying the computer!

In any case, I think hard drives filling up is an inevitability anyways. In regards to mail, I've just turned off automatic attachment downloads, hopefully that will save me some space! It's still the early days for my new Mac! Thanks for all the help. 🙂

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Answer 9

Oct 24, 2014 9:35 AM in response to Kaze Kyou

If you feel that you are losing space in the future, ask here for help locating and removing data.

Apps like MacKeeper, CleanMyMac, TuneUpMyMac, Washing Machine or anything like these apps might appear to be helpful, can do too more harm than good. As a result of the 'cleanup' it can leave your Mac non-functional. The forums are full of users with computers that no longer work correctly after running these so call 'cleaners'.

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-4171

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3036

Your Mac runs maintenance in the background for you > Mac OS X: About background maintenance tasks

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2319?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

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