What is Other Storage in Mac (Remove Other Storage)

Storage or disk space is the amount of data measured in “bytes” that a hard drive can hold. Mac users can check how much disk space is available on their systems by clicking on it Applemenu at the top left of the screen and selecting “About This Mac,” then selecting the “Storage” tab.

Nevertheless, even basic information can seem confusing at first, especially regarding the Mac's hard drive categories. Mac users often become aware of storage/disk space issues when downloading files from the Internet displays a message stating that 'there is not enough free space'.

When you check the status of the storage space on your system, you may notice that the “Other” category is taking up a lot of disk space on your Mac.

The “Other” category consists of files that we call cache, or temporary files. These are files that are created on your Mac by various apps and Mac settings. You can delete these files using useful apps such as CleanMyMac.

In this article I will explain how to delete these “Other” cache files from your Mac to free up disk space.

What is other storage in Mac

The other storage category in Mac can be misleading. The remaining category contains not only cache or temporary files but also personal files. For example, the remaining storage contains personal files such as PDF, image files, documents, etc. It can also contain files that contain compressed content such as ISO files, IMG files, ZIP files, etc. Mac files are also included as “Other” files such as iCloud files, screenshots made in macOS, font files, application plugins and extensions.

In short, a lot of different files that are linked to many different apps. This is just a small list, the Other Storage category contains even more types of storage.

How to Delete Other Storage in Mac

A Mac operating system is often optimized to prevent problems such as storage problems. This has a handy tool built in to clean up your Mac and make it faster.

The tool is called Recommendations and can be started by clicking the Manage button in the Storage settings.

In the Recommendations you have a number of tools to manage Other storage on your Mac. You can store dates and data in iCloud. Keep all files, photos, and messages in iCloud and save space by only keeping recent files and optimized photos on this Mac when storage space is needed.

Enabling Optimize Storage allows you to save space by automatically removing movies and TV shows you've already watched from this Mac.

Automatically emptying the trash also saves Other Storage disk space. If you forget to empty the trash yourself. Simply moving files to the Trash is not enough to save storage on your Mac.

Clean up documents if you want to delete old documents on your Mac to free up storage. Old documents in the Documents folder can take up a lot of storage space and it is advisable to clean out this folder periodically.

Delete cache files

As previously indicated in the intro text. The Other storage on your Mac also consists partly of cache files.

Cache files are temporary files that your Mac computer downloads and stores to save time in the future. For example, when you visit a website, your browser downloads the images and stores them in a cache folder. The next time you visit the site, your browser will quickly load the data from the cache instead of downloading it again. Cached data includes files, images, videos, scripts, and other multimedia.

It's not just your browser that caches files. Other apps, such as photo and video editing software, also create cached data. Even its own apps Apple, like Spotlight and Maps, and macOS itself cache files. There are three main types of caches: browser cache, system cache, and application cache (also called user cache files).

Clearing the cache removes unnecessary data and frees up disk space. But is it a good idea to delete all those cache files?

Although cache files can help you load images and other elements on pages faster when you revisit familiar sites, you usually don't need the cached data. Think about every website you've ever visited online – every online store, every social media profile, every search query. That's a lot of images and videos stored on your Mac computer, and you probably don't give most of those websites a second visit.

And that's just the browser cache – there's also the system and application cache. If you never cleared the cache, you may have gigabytes of unnecessary files taking up space on your Mac computer.

You can delete cache files in two ways. You can manually delete the cache files for each app OR you can use a tool to automatically delete cache files on your Mac.

Manually delete cache files from your Mac

Open Finder. In the menu at the top, click Go and then Go to folder. In the window type:

~/Bibliotheek/Caches/

The cache files folder on your Mac will now open. Here you will see a whole list of apps installed on your Mac and their associated temporary cache files. Select the cache you want to delete and click delete.

I imagine you have no idea what cache you want to delete. Therefore, it is more convenient to use a tool to delete the cache files on your Mac and free up other storage on your Mac.

Automatically Delete Cache Files on Your Mac to Free Up Other Storage

The fastest and easiest way to delete cache files is to use CleanMyMac.

In the left menu, click on System Files. Then click the Scan button to detect temporary files on your Mac.

An overview is now shown of the cache files found on your Mac. These are user cache files, system cache files, language files, system logs, and user logs. Click the Clear button to permanently delete the various cache files from your Mac.

Don't worry, you can delete all these files safely.

Cleaning up the system, this won't take long.

When the Other Storage cleanup is complete, you will see an overview of how many gigabytes of storage have been removed from your Mac.

Read more tips to improve your Make Mac faster.

I hope this helped you. Thank you for reading!