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1. Clear Mac System Storage
2. How To Clear System Storage

Here, the Podcasts app is taking up 171.5MB of storage. While that’s not a huge number considering that many new iOS devices have 64GB to 256GB of storage, it can make a big difference on devices that have 16GB or 32GB of storage. Deleting An Entire Podcast. App plugins: If you download and install a plugin or extension for an app, like a browser plugin. Now that you know the sorts of files that get lumped into the Other category in your Mac storage, it should be clear cleaning up that space isn't as simple as flipping a switch. You can target individual file types though, with special.

Optimized Storage in macOS Sierra and later* can save space by storing your content in iCloud and making it available on demand. When storage space is needed, files, photos, movies, email attachments, and other files that you seldom use are stored in iCloud automatically. Each file stays right where you last saved it, and downloads when you open it. Files that you’ve used recently remain on your Mac, along with optimized versions of your photos.

* If you haven't yet upgraded to macOS Sierra or later, learn about other ways to free up storage space.

Find out how much storage is available on your Mac

Choose Apple menu  > About This Mac, then click Storage. Each segment of the bar is an estimate of the storage space used by a category of files. Move your pointer over each segment for more detail.

Click the Manage button to open the Storage Management window, pictured below. This button is available only in macOS Sierra or later.

Manage storage on your Mac

The Storage Management window offers recommendations for optimizing your storage. If some recommendations are already turned on, you will see fewer recommendations.

Store in iCloud

Clear Mac System Storage

Click the Store in iCloud button, then choose from these options:

• Desktop and Documents. Store all files from these two locations in iCloud Drive. When storage space is needed, only the files you recently opened are kept on your Mac, so that you can easily work offline. Files stored only in iCloud show a download icon , which you can double-click to download the original file. Learn more about this feature.
  
• Photos. Store all original, full-resolution photos and videos in iCloud Photos. When storage space is needed, only space-saving (optimized) versions of photos are kept on your Mac. To download the original photo or video, just open it.
  
• Messages. Store all messages and attachments in iCloud. When storage space is needed, only the messages and attachments you recently opened are kept on your Mac. Learn more about Messages in iCloud.

Storing files in iCloud uses the storage space in your iCloud storage plan. If you reach or exceed your iCloud storage limit, you can either buy more iCloud storage or make more iCloud storage available. iCloud storage starts at 50GB for $0.99 (USD) a month, and you can purchase additional storage directly from your Apple device. Learn more about prices in your region.

How To Clear System Storage

Optimize Storage

Click the Optimize button, then choose from these options.

• Automatically remove watched movies and TV shows. When storage space is needed, movies or TV shows that you purchased from the iTunes Store and already watched are removed from your Mac. Click the download icon next to a movie or TV show to download it again.
  
• Download only recent attachments. Mail automatically downloads only the attachments that you recently received. You can manually download any attachments at any time by opening the email or attachment, or saving the attachment to your Mac.
  
• Don't automatically download attachments. Mail downloads an attachment only when you open the email or attachment, or save the attachment to your Mac.

Optimizing storage for movies, TV shows, and email attachments doesn't require iCloud storage space.

Empty Trash Automatically

Empty Trash Automatically permanently deletes files that have been in the Trash for more than 30 days.

Reduce Clutter

Reduce Clutter helps you to identify large files and files you might no longer need. Click the Review Files button, then choose any of the file categories in the sidebar, such as Applications, Documents, Music Creation, or Trash.

You can delete the files in some categories directly from this window. Other categories show the total storage space used by the files in each app. You can then open the app and decide whether to delete files from within it.

Learn how to redownload apps, music, movies, TV shows, and books.

Where to find the settings for each feature

The button for each recommendation in the Storage Management window affects one or more settings in other apps. You can also control those settings directly within each app.

• If you're using macOS Catalina, choose Apple menu  > System Preferences, click Apple ID, then select iCloud in the sidebar: Store in iCloud turns on the Optimize Mac Storage setting on the right. Then click Options next to iCloud Drive: Store in iCloud turns on the Desktop & Documents Folders setting. To turn off iCloud Drive entirely, deselect iCloud Drive.
  In macOS Mojave or earlier, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click iCloud, then click Options next to iCloud Drive. Store in iCloud turns on the Desktop & Documents Folders and Optimize Mac Storage settings.
• In Photos, choose Photos > Preferences, then click iCloud. Store in iCloud selects iCloud Photos and Optimize Mac Storage.
• In Messages, choose Messages > Preferences, then click iMessage. Store in iCloud selects Enable Messages in iCloud.

• If you're using macOS Catalina, open the Apple TV app, choose TV > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Files. Optimize Storage selects “Automatically delete watched movies and TV shows.”
  In macOS Mojave or earlier, open iTunes, choose iTunes > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Advanced. Optimize Storage selects “Automatically delete watched movies and TV shows.”
• In Mail, choose Mail > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Accounts. In the Account Information section on the right, Optimize Storage sets the Download Attachments menu to either Recent or None.

Empty Trash Automatically: From the Finder, choose Finder > Preferences, then click Advanced. Empty Trash Automatically selects “Remove items from the Trash after 30 days.”

Other ways that macOS helps automatically save space

With macOS Sierra or later, your Mac automatically takes these additional steps to save storage space:

• Detects duplicate downloads in Safari, keeping only the most recent version of the download
• Reminds you to delete used app installers
• Removes old fonts, languages, and dictionaries that aren't being used
• Clears caches, logs, and other unnecessary data when storage space is needed

How to free up storage space manually

Even without using the Optimized Storage features of Sierra or later, you can take other steps to make more storage space available:

• Music, movies, and other media can use a lot of storage space. Learn how to delete music, movies, and TV shows from your device.
• Delete other files that you no longer need by moving them to the Trash, then emptying the Trash. The Downloads folder is good place to look for files that you might no longer need.
• Move files to an external storage device.
• Compress files.
• Delete unneeded email: In the Mail app, choose Mailbox > Erase Junk Mail. If you no longer need the email in your Trash mailbox, choose Mailbox > Erase Deleted Items.

Learn more

• The Storage pane of About This Mac is the best way to determine the amount of storage space available on your Mac. Disk Utility and other apps might show storage categories such as Not Mounted, VM, Recovery, Other Volumes, Free, or Purgeable. Don't rely on these categories to understand how to free up storage space or how much storage space is available for your data.
• When you duplicate a file on an APFS-formatted volume, that file doesn't use additional storage space on the volume. Deleting a duplicate file frees up only the space required by any data you might have added to the duplicate. If you no longer need any copies of the file, you can recover all of the storage space by deleting both the duplicate and the original file.
• If you're using a pro app and Optimize Mac Storage, learn how to make sure that your projects are always on your Mac and able to access their files.

Anyone who listens to a lot of podcasts knows that pretty soon, those sound files that you’re listening to can start taking up a lot of space on your iOS device. Today we’ll look at how to free up a lot of storage on your iPhone or iPad by managing podcasts in the iOS Podcasts app.

How Much Storage Is Being Used By Podcasts?
If you only subscribe to a handful of podcasts, you might not be using a lot of your device storage. On the other hand, even if you do only listen to a couple of podcasts, holding onto past episodes unnecessarily can fill up gigabytes of storage in a hurry. Let’s see how to find out how much space the Podcasts app is taking up.

Launch Settings, then tap General > Storage & iCloud Usage, then tap on Manage Storage under the heading of Storage (iCloud storage is also listed). This page (screenshot below)shows how much space is used on your iOS device, how much is available, and then provides a list of storage usage by app.

Here, the Podcasts app is taking up 171.5MB of storage. While that’s not a huge number considering that many new iOS devices have 64GB to 256GB of storage, it can make a big difference on devices that have 16GB or 32GB of storage.

Deleting An Entire Podcast
Perhaps you’ve grown tired of a podcast, it’s no longer being published, or you have found new source for your listening pleasure. It’s simple to delete an entire podcast and free up any space associated with it. Tap on the Podcasts button in the Storage list (seen above) to see information about the app and how much storage each podcast is using.

To delete a podcast from your list and free up all of the data associated with it, just swipe the podcast title to the left to expose the Delete button, then tap the Delete button (see image above). Alternatively, tapping the Edit button seen at upper right in the screenshot above displays a small delete button in front of each podcast, making it easy to go through a long list of podcasts to delete many quickly.

Set Episode Limits and Delete Played Episodes
Now that you’ve gained back some storage on your iOS device, perhaps you’d like to keep things “clean” automatically. The easiest way to do this is to not accumulate a lot of episodes of each podcast by setting episode limits and also by deleting those episodes you’ve listened to. Once again, this is done in Settings, not in the Podcasts app.

Launch Settings, then scroll down until you see the Podcasts button. Tap on it to view the variety of settings for Podcasts:

In the screenshot above and on the left, you see the various settings for the Podcasts app. Limiting the number of episodes on your iOS device can save space by clearing out old episodes when new ones are downloaded or listened to. On the screenshot above and on the right, you see that podcasts can be limited by the most recent episodes (most recent only or 2, 3, 5 or 10 most recent) or by time (day, week, two weeks, month).

The other way to clear storage is to automatically delete episodes that have been played. That’s done by tapping the Delete Played Episodes button (green means enabled). When enabled, podcast episodes are deleted 24 hours after you’ve listened to them. While this is useful for clearing storage, it can be frustrating if you’re the type who often likes to re-listen to an episode.

The settings we’ve just looked at are default settings that are applied to any new podcasts that are subscribed to. What if you wish to give each podcast its own settings? In that case, launch the Podcasts app, tap on My Podcasts, then tap on the particular podcast you want to change settings for.

Next, tap the settings “gear” button (arrow in screenshot below, left):

What appears (right, above) are the settings for an individual podcast. Each of the default settings we saw in the earlier screenshot can now be customized for a podcast for which you’d like to keep more or less episodes.

Author’s Note: While I show the PodCacher podcast as an example of one I’m deleting, there’s no way I’d actually delete this excellent podcast about geocaching.

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