Maximizing Your Storage on macOS Ventura: A Guide to Managing Space

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In this video, we’re going to look at how we can manage our storage space on the Mac with MacOS Ventura. Now, this is nothing new. But with Mac OS venture, Apple changed, where you can find this information, how it is managed, let’s see where we can find this and the different options we have for managing our storage on the Mac with MacOS Ventura. Let’s go over to my Mac.

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Now, in past versions of Mac OS, to manage your storage space, what you did is you went up to the Apple menu, and then from here, you would go to About this Mac. And then under About This Mac, you could go to more info. And then there would be a new window where you could manage your storage. Well, now what happens is this more info since MacOS Ventura. What happens here is it opens up the settings app, we manage all of our different storage options in the settings app. So I click on it, and you’re going to see that it opened up to my system settings, which replaced System Preferences. Now, where this is located is in general. So an easier way to get to this, I’m going to close my System Preferences here, System Settings, and I go up under the apple, we go over to our system settings. And again, what I need to do is just go over to General, under General, what you’re going to see is

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storage. This is where we can manage all of our storage, we can see what has taken up the space and we can delete different items. We also have different recommendations from Apple to manage our space. Let’s go ahead and click on this and see all these different options.

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The first thing we have here is we have a little chart showing what has taken up all of the space. So right now my Mac OS has taken up 21 gigabytes. A go over to the right, just a little bit system data is taken up 12 gigabytes, I’m using about 120 gigabytes of 245 gigabytes. So this is where we can see what is using all of our space and how much we have. Also, if you have external drives connected to your Mac, you can click on all volumes and you can see all the volumes.

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Now, if you’re running low on space, what can you do? Well, the next step here is recommendations. Apple has various recommendations to help you manage your space. Now a lot of this is based off of iCloud. So what you probably will need to have is an iCloud subscription. So you can use iCloud Drive to store some of the information. That’s basically what Apple does is they move some of the information from your Mac over to iCloud. And depending on what you have, you’re gonna see different options here. In my case here, I’m able to store my messages in iCloud that’ll save up some space. I can also optimize storage for my TV app, maybe I have some shows that I’ve watched since I’ve watched them, I don’t need to have them on my Mac anymore. Let’s put them into iCloud. And then I can also have it empty my trash automatically. To turn these on or see the various options, all you have to do is just go over to the right, so let’s go over to store in iCloud. What this is going to do when I click on this is this is going to store all of my messages in iCloud. Now I will still be able to get at those messages. But if I’m not on the internet, I may not be able to see some of the images, basically that so what this is going to do is move those images over to iCloud.

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With optimized storage, I click on this. And what I’m able to do is optimize any storage for movies and TV shows. Again, you may have different results under these recommendations.

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Now let’s say you wanted to fine tune it yourself, you want to manage the space, you don’t want apple to do this. Well if we go down towards the bottom, you’re gonna see I have these different categories. And what I’m able to see is how much space each category has taken. So applications here is taken up about 970 megabytes, I can see that mail has taken up about 134 megabytes, my photos, that is taken up about 173 megabytes, so we can easily see what is taken up space. In addition to that we can also manage this. Let’s go over to my documents here. If we go over to the right, you’re gonna see my documents are taken up 28 megabytes. Well, when I click on the i Here we have a new window that opens up. And from here, what I’m able to do is view all of my downloads. And I can go and select any one of these or all of these and then delete them. So if I no longer need this download here, I just select it, and I click on Delete and it deletes that download it. I can also show any of these in my finder, maybe you want to take another look at it before you delete it. So you can click on Show in Finder, and it’ll show in a Finder window,

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I can see what my unsupported apps are, if I have some documents for some unsupported apps, maybe I just wanted to delete them, I don’t have the app that can work with them anymore. So just delete them, I can go to a file browser, when I click on this, I can view all of my files here. So we can see that my pictures are taken up 2.65 gigabytes, I click on it. And now I can see what has taken up that space. If we go to Documents, I can see it has taken up 278 megabytes, I click on it, and I can see what has taken up that space. And then if I want to delete any of them, I just click on it. And I can move it to the trash. I can also see what my large files are, when I click on this, what it’ll do is it’ll show all of my large files, maybe I have a movie on here, that is a large file, and I forgot about it. Well, this is where I can go and see that movie. And if I want to delete it, I’d be able to delete it. So this is a great way of managing your documents manually, all you have to do is just go over to the eye here. And then you can view all of your documents, you can view your downloads your large files, you can even view them in a file browser and view them by size. If we go over to messages here, I click on the eye, what I’m able to do is see which messages here are taking up space.

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So this ping image here is taken up nine megabytes, if I want to delete it, I could go and delete it. So to manage your space, all you have to do is just go over to the category here, and then over to the right of the category that you want to manage. Click on the little eye here, a new window will open up and then you can manage that space, each one is going to work a little bit different. But basically, they all work the same way you’re going to be able to see what has taken up the space and move them to the trash. Now below that we also have other users Mac OS and system data, we can’t do anything with these, I can’t go and delete files from my other users. So if we look you’re gonna see I cannot click on an eye here, I can’t do anything about Mac OS that’s taken up 21 gigabytes. And there’s really nothing I can do about that. There’s no i to delete different portions of Mac OS. But at least we can get some information in here and just see what is going on. When you are done, all you have to do is just close your system settings. And what I would recommend doing then is emptying your trash doesn’t move different items into the trash. And then once you empty your trash, you don’t have some more space freed up on your Mac. So that is how we can manage our storage in macOS Ventura.

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We do this through our system settings. All we have to do is just go over to General and then we go over to storage. And then from there, we’re able to see what has taken up our space. We have some recommendations from Apple to manage that. And then we can also manage them manually. So that’s how we can manage our storage space on a Mac with MacOS Ventura.