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.
Choose the Apple menu Restart. Or press and hold the power button and, when a dialog box appears, click the Restart or press R. Restarting your Mac essentially clears your macOS’s memory and starts it up fresh. Incorrectly formatted drive. Not every external drive is optimized for Macs. On OS X Lion I don't see the hard drive in the Finder and I seem to have no permission to create a folder under / from terminal. I know I can do this if I activate the root user, but I need to be able to see the directories I have created under / in the Finder.
How To See Hard Drive On Mac
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
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.
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
Fsnotes 2 5 – note manager. 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.
Simple question.
However, not exactly one that has a simple answer to it.
Whenever you try to find that answer in the tech specs when buying an iMac (as an example) you will not be able to locate the actual manufacturer of the drive. Here is what I mean.
I happen to have seen Macs with all kinds of hard drives in them ranging from Maxtor to Seagate, Samsung, WD, and HGST. So, in a way, you could say that the next Mac you purchase may or may not have a medium to good quality drive inside. Well, that was the case at one time but things have certainly changed regarding Macs and their hard drives of choice.
In fact, most of the modern MacBook Pros or Airs will come with preinstalled Samsung SSDs or Seagate SSHDs fusion/hybrid drives.
At the present time, the most common drive inside a regular Mac (unfortunately) is by Seagate.
This has to do directly with the fact that Apple started to cut corners which meant saving on components. Seagate hard drives are quite honestly the cheapest and most unreliable of the hard drive available in today’s market according to Backblaze research.
Here’s what is actually happening.
Seagate programmers have been outsourcing to India and that is why some hard drives are being recalled for any one of many seriously obvious flaws. Why are they outsourcing? Well, that just happens to be another way to save a buck and if you are already cutting corners, outsourcing gives you a great way to do just that.
Seagate has gone down the drain ever since they purchased the Maxtor company. At the time, Maxtor drives were one of the best on the market. After the Seagate purchase, something happened and resulted in the mess we see today.
So… why does Mac use them?
There is also no simple answer to this question. But I have my suspicions.
The Macs are no longer getting assembled in the US but in China. Seagates are all assembled in China. Outsourcing this kind of stuff to China or India is really not the best idea…but it saves money.
If you think I am purely speculating, you should take a look at this article by The Verge.
Hard Drive Wiki
There are some cases where we can still find WD, HGST and Toshiba drives inside Macs, but that’s on the rare side of the scale. My guess is that those contracts have not completely ended with those manufacturers. But when they do expire, we will likely just see Seagate and only Seagate inside Macs.
How do you check what type of hard drive you have inside your Mac?
The process is quite simple. Just pull down the Apple menu on your computer and choose “About This Mac.” Follow that by clicking on “More Info” and click “System Report.”
Look under the heading of “Hardware” for the entry listed as “Serial-ATA” and select it.
Expand the chipset and look for “APPLE SSD SM128” or something similar to that. The final block of characters will show you not just the manufacturer of the hard drive but it will also give you the model and size.
With an SSD on a MacBook Air or the MacBook Pro they are as follows:
TS – Toshiba
SM – Samsung
WD – Western Digital
ST – Seagate
Other – likely a 3rd party upgrade
Hopefully, this will help you to unlock the mystery of what kind of hard drive lives inside your Mac as well as explain to you why Mac drives are not like they used to be. If you have been reading my blogs for any length of time, you should know my feelings regarding Apple. And although I do understand why a computer manufacturer may choose to cut a few corners to save some money in order to increase revenues, I also see this from the point of view of someone who ends up working on Macs that have experienced issues resulting from those corner-cutting measures. Clearly the product is not as high quality as it once was and in a way, that is a shame.
There is no sign that points to much of an improvement on this so expect to see Macs with Seagate drives exclusively in the not too distant future.
About the author: Yevgeniy Kapishon is a hardcore techno enthusiast, a senior data recovery engineer and a blogger at Aesonlabs® Data Recovery Systems, living in Toronto, Canada. In his free time, he likes to wander and explore the back alleys of his neighborhood or carve into his favorite sci-fi flicks.