In today’s era of multi-terabyte hard drives, many of us don’t keep as close an eye on our disk usage as we used to. Still, even the largest drives fill up eventually. If you don’t know how to check your disk space use on OS X, here’s where to look. Options 1 and 2: From the Finder The Finder gives you a couple ways to see how much free disk space you have. These are the easiest ways. Preview your storage device.
In macOS, if you select and item in the Finder and press the spacebar on your keyboard, you get a preview of the item. For example, if you select a text document and then press the spacebar, you can see what’s in the document without actually opening it. IDG You can use preview to check your storage device’s capacity. Select the storage device on the Desktop. (To make your storage device appear on your Desktop, go to the Finder and select Finder Preferences, click on General, and modify the setting for Show these items on the Desktop.) Or open a Finder window, look in the left column, under the Devices heading, and select the storage device.
Press the spacebar. You should see a window open that shows the capacity of your storage device and the available space. To close the window, press spacebar again, or press Command-W, or click on the close-window icon (the circle X) in the upper left. Finder window status bar. If you would like to have an overview of your free disk space at all times from the Finder, you can turn on the Finder’s status bar. Open a Finder window if you don’t have one open already (click the Finder’s Dock icon or go to File New Finder Window). Open the View menu and select Show status bar.
This will show you how many items are in the current folder, and if you’re viewing a folder on your hard drive (such as your Applications or Documents folder), you’ll also get a readout of your hard drive’s free space. IDG Want an always-visible overview of your disk usage? Go to the View menu and select Show Status Bar. Options 3: Get Info IDG The Get Info box is an easy way to check your disk’s capacity and used space. Find your hard drive in the Finder and select it. If it appears in the Finder window sidebar or on the Desktop (it doesn’t by default—go to Finder Preferences to change that), click your hard drive’s icon in either of those spots.
If you want to see how much memory you use over a longer time (if you want to see what application combination uses how much memory) I would suggest the system addition MenuMeters. It can display the amount of used/unused RAM, HDD usage etc in your menu bar.
If your hard drive icon doesn’t appear there, go to Go Computer, then click the hard drive icon under Devices. Click the File menu, and select Get Info, or press Comand-I on your keyboard. The Info window shows the capacity, available space, and used space, as well as other information. Option 4: About This Mac In recent versions of macOS (Yosemite or later), you can easily check your disk usage from the About box. Open the Apple menu, then select About This Mac. Click the Storage tab in the toolbar to see how much disk space you have available. (On OS X Mountain Lion or Mavericks, click the More info button, then click Storage.) You also get a simplified overview of what sort of files are eating up your storage space.
IDG The Mac's About box is the easiest way to see your hard drive’s free space. (macOS High Sierra shown above.) Option 5: From Disk Utility You can also view your free disk space from your Mac’s Disk Utility app. Open Spotlight by clicking the magnifying glass in the upper-right corner of the screen, then type Disk Utility in the search box that appears.
Once Disk Utility comes up in the list and is highlighted, press the Enter key. Disk Utility is also found in Applications Utilities. Once Disk Utility opens, select your hard drive’s name from the list. You can see your drive’s capacity, its available space, its used space, and other info.
You can also check the free space for any drive you have connected to your Mac from this window, be it a USB flash drive or external hard drive. IDG Disk Utility provides basic information about your hard drive and other disks.
It also lets you repair or reformat your disks.
Wow you seem to know pretty much about SSD and usable space. I was hoping if you could help me answering the following. Btw I am sorry if I am bunching in here, I thought I had the same question plus another one related to it and I was not sure whether I should post it here or open a new thread.
I talked to a Genius in an Apple Store and I also talked to Apple Care and they both were not sure how much usable space would be left for me to use after formatting the 128GB SSD from my rMBP 13'. You said 120GB and that matches with System Information (I thought it was weird and they could not explain it either ?). My Question: Is it normal to have 90.04GB left in my usable space after ONLY installing:. iWork '09 (700MB). MS Office for Mac 2011 (1.2GB?). Coconut Battery (couple of MB) My rMBP 13' came with Mountain Lion OSX and iPhoto, GarageBand and iMovie preinstalled.
Further I do not have any backup programmes on (Time Machine is also off), and I have not downloaded anything or put any files on my brand new rMBP. Yet, my free space is fluctuating couple of GB (1-2) without any reason. The only thing I have done since my new SSD (replacement) last week is surfing around searching for solutions for my other issues with this rMBP.
Apple Care told me Mountain Lion is taking around 6GB to install. If that is true, I should have 120GB-6GB-700MB-1.2GB-couple of MB = around 112GB free space left to use? But I do not. I have only 90.04GB space left and after talking to Apple Care for a long time he adviced me to clean install Mountain Lion OSX on my rMBP. Just wanted to do so and came across this issue: Mountain Lion OSX is not compatible with this computer.
Came back to this Community and found my answer about that. And also found this thread ?. Be very careful here. The operating system and applications use a certain amount of space for housekeeping (so to speak). You are over-simplifying how your storage space gets used.
You are the victim of some pretty bad information, so before doing anything rash, take a moment. If you have a Retina MacBook Pro 13', your computer is 100% compatible with OSX Mountain Lion, not sure where you were told otherwise. Also, a clean install of the operating system likely won't change anything. At best, it might recover a small amount of storage, but it will most likely provide zero benefit after you finish restoring applications, etc. Take a breath, and get some better information. I would start with installing a utility to help you correctly understand how your drive space is being used.
I use Spacie ( ), which costs a few dollars from the App Store, but does a great job of showing what precisely is using up space on your SSD. Finally - as long as you don't plan on storing video or music files (or lots of virtual machines, or other huge files), the space you have should last quite a while. If you.do. plan on storing these file types, then you need to arrive at better strategy, because that internal SSD will never be enough, no matter how carefully you manage the space.
Thanks to the info from Kappy, we ordered the MacBook Air with the 128GB SSD for my daughter to use in college. So far, she still has tons of free space, and at her current 'run rate' it will take years before she starts to run out of room. Message was edited by: grizfan Oh - one more thing. Get Time Machine setup. I can speak from personal experience that this is VERY valuable. A 500GB external 2.5' hard drive would be ideal, and can save you a LOT of grief down the road (I'm speaking from personal experience here).
As far as the fluctuation is concerned, applications and the operating system manage temporary storage in the background (temporary files, caching, things like that). So, the available space will fluctuate a bit, I wouldn't worry too much about it, unless you see a big swing (5% or more, for example). That application I mentioned should help a lot by giving you a good idea where the space is being used. In the meantime, I would strongly recommend against reinstalling Mountain Lion, there really isn't anything wrong with your Mac. Apple Footer. This site contains user submitted content, comments and opinions and is for informational purposes only. Apple may provide or recommend responses as a possible solution based on the information provided; every potential issue may involve several factors not detailed in the conversations captured in an electronic forum and Apple can therefore provide no guarantee as to the efficacy of any proposed solutions on the community forums.
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